Lending a helping hand in San Francisco on #FridayforGood

By
Monday, 27 April 2015

We work at Twitter because we’re passionate about changing the world. One of the ways we do this is through volunteering in communities where we work. While many do this throughout the year independently, #FridayforGood is when we come together across the company on a single day to lend a hand to area nonprofits and community organizations.

This spring’s #FridayforGood took place on April 17. Around 1,100 employees volunteered at over 55 projects across San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Whether it was gardening at Stern Grove, serving breakfast at Northern California’s largest homeless shelter or helping students with their reading, we strive to be a force for good. Here’s a look at a few places we went.

Tenderloin Safe Passage
Tenderloin Safe Passage (@TLSafePassage) is a group of agencies and individuals dedicated to making the Tenderloin safer. One project is the Safe Passage Sidewalk Mural, a series of painted yellow sidewalk bricks designating safe paths through the area. We joined in to paint several street murals.



The Arc San Francisco
Several clients from The Arc San Francisco (@thearcsf) joined us at Twitter HQ for mock job interviews. The Arc provides services for folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities and helps clients find work and stay employed. Twitter volunteers spent time getting to know these clients individually, and offered feedback to help them improve their interview skills.


Catholic Charities of San Francisco
Our Latino employee resource group, @TwitterALAS, partnered with Catholic Charities of San Francisco (@CatholicCSF) to host a group of Latino immigrant high school students new to the Bay Area. The group came to lunch at Twitter HQ to discuss career paths and how Twitter can be an educational tool. @TwitterALAS then escorted the students on a Bridge to Bridge cruise.


Coding for Kids
Since our last Friday for Good in November, several engineers have been working on a class designed to teach kids how to code. Since then, we’ve hosted 10 of these classes in various forms. This time we had a blast teaching a new cohort of students from Catholic Charities computer and coding basics. At the end, the kids told us they wish they’d had more time to play games (next time, kids!). The engineers are going to work with more local organizations to bring 8-11 year olds to Twitter to teach them coding in Scratch using Raspberry Pi.

Citizen Schools
We teamed up with Citizen Schools (@cschoolsCA), which promotes student achievement in California, to share best practices about how to use Twitter as a nonprofit. The group joined us at HQ to talk about the best ways to use the platform to reach out to students and other nonprofits. We received great feedback and look forward to turning this class into a series we can offer to other groups soon.


Blood drive and GLAAD petition
We partnered with the Red Cross (@RedCross) to hold a blood drive at Twitter HQ. Throughout the day, the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank collected 101 units of blood. We also added 13 people to the Bone Marrow Registry.

We used the blood drive event as an opportunity to protest the long-time FDA ban on gay men donating blood by offering the @GLAAD Celibacy Challenge petition for co-workers to sign against the ban.


Lending a helping hand in San Francisco on #FridayforGood

This sums up just a handful of the activities we undertook in San Francisco last week with community groups. We look forward to working alongside even more organizations next time. Check out the full list of Bay Area participating organizations below:

  • 826 Valencia
  • A Home Away From Homelessness
  • American Red Cross
  • ASIAN, Inc.
  • At The Crossroads
  • Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC)
  • Bay Area Women’s & Children’s Center at Tenderloin Community School
  • Be the Match Bay Area
  • BGCSF/YMCA Boeddeker Park
  • Catholic Charities SF
  • Citizen Schools
  • Compass Family Services
  • Curry Senior Center
  • De Marillac Academy
  • Demonstration Gardens
  • Delivering Innovations in Supportive Housing
  • Episcopal Community Services (ECS)
  • Embarcadero YMCA
  • Friends of the Urban Forest
  • GLIDE Memorial Church
  • Golden Gate Audubon Society
  • Hamilton Family Center
  • Jewish Vocational Services (JVS)
  • Kiva
  • Larkin Street Youth Services
  • Mission YMCA
  • Mo’ MAGIC
  • Oakland Digital ODALC
  • Presidio YMCA
  • Project Homeless Connect
  • Project Open Hand
  • Safe Passage Tenderloin
  • San Francisco City Impact
  • San Francisco Opera Education
  • SF Public Works
  • SF-Marin Food Bank
  • San Francisco Unified School District
  • St. Anthony Foundation
  • St. Francis Living Room
  • Street Soccer USA
  • St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco
  • Stern Grove Festival
  • Support For Families Of Children With Disabilities (SFCD)
  • The Arc San Francisco
  • TL Walking Tour with Del Seymour
  • Toni’s Kitty Rescue
  • United Playaz
  • Year Up

Read this post to learn more about our volunteer efforts around the U.S. and across the world.