This past 2018-2019 school year has been the most successful year of AFH University (AFH U) to date! AFH U continues to grow exponentially in both student-athletes involved in service and the hours they volunteer. This year, we had 2,527 student-athletes* complete 7,608 hours of service across the AFH U campuses! This means that AFH U student-athletes donated $193,471 worth of service to the organizations and causes they care about, lifting up their local communities. This incredible progress is due to the hard work and dedication of our AFH and AFH U staff, liaisons, and all the student-athletes we work to connect to service. AFH U continues to emphasize measurement and evaluation, find improved ways to utilize technology, and expand and modify our curriculum to best serve the needs of student-athletes.
This year, we were proud to have Georgetown University and UCLA joined the AFH U Team. AFH U facilitated 18 workshops this year, reaching 51 sports teams across the eight (8) campuses. Last year we met with multiple Student Athlete Advisory Councils (SAACs) to help develop the AFH U strategic plan. This year, we have worked to implement and utilize it as a guidepost for goals, objectives, and outcomes. This strategic plan helps serve as a guide to our work with student-athlete, university staff and community partner input as crucial resources along the way.
While AFH U expanded the number of universities that we work with, we also worked to deepen the relationships we hold with our existing universities, student leaders, and community partners. 90% of AFH U community visits this year were with repeat community partners and sites! 45 out of the 61 community partners had repeat visits this year. Athletes are doing service in larger groups, for longer periods of time, and are often returning to groups they have worked with in the past. Organizations are asking for regular volunteer hours, consistency among student-athletes and activities, and for clear communication about expectations. All of this great feedback deepens our students’ relationships with the organizations and schools they volunteered for and helps us create a stronger program for student-athletes, community partners, universities and communities who benefit by having student-athletes as volunteers.
For more information about AFH U’s impact in 2018-2019, please see the infographic below.
* duplicated number