CASCADE: Community Service | Fall 2025 Campaign

New goal of $1,500! Thank you all so much for your support! We're hoping to keep the momentum going and raise $1,500 to create higher-quality care packages for more underserved individuals, expand our volunteering efforts at local elementary schools, and form meaningful partnerships with Bay Area community-based organizations to spread compassion, kindness, and empathy at Berkeley and beyond!

Our Mission

We are dedicated to developing a culture of compassion, service, and empathy through hands-on learning, activities, and applied community service. Since 2022, we have been mentoring elementary school children on social-emotional topics and engaging them in hands-on service benefiting underserved communities. Historically, we partnered with the Berkeley Unified School District to offer mentorship to youth at Cragmont Elementary School and Berkeley Arts Magnet School. These lessons, developed by our club members, cover social-emotional topics like mindfulness, mental health, and self-compassion.

Teaching Elementary Students about Socio-emotional Topics!Our six-week program culminates in a capstone project in which we engage our students in compiling care packages for an underserved community of our members' choosing. Past examples include winter essentials and hygiene packages for the unhoused community in San Francisco and arts and craft kits for local underserved youth in Oakland. It has truly been a fulfilling experience seeing firsthand our direct impact on those we serve. So, we thought, why stop there? This summer, we met with Fairmont Elementary and are making plans to teach lessons for their students.

Making Care Packages for Underserved Communities!

As for our efforts on campus, the initial premise was to host events, which we called Campus Compassion, to cultivate a culture of kindness on campus. We hosted five interactive events throughout the course of the semester: handing out over 450 sticky notes with hand-written words of affirmation through tabling, setting up bracelet-making and postcard printmaking stations on Upper Sproul, and more. We even established a partnership with the UC Berkeley Student Union to collaborate with them on events for the campus community: hosting a slime-making station at their semesterly DeStress Fest last spring and collaborating for their Student Parent Month Event this fall. This year, we hope to continue growing our impact on campus through more events, such as giving out wellness kits, setting up stations for bouquet-making, writing letters, and collaborating with other campus organizations.

Postcards and Printmaking Campus Compassion Event! At CASCADE, our goal is to spread empathy, compassion, and service to our “3 C’s”: local children, our UC Berkeley campus, and the larger Bay Area community. Within UC Berkeley, our club members will receive the fulfillment that comes with engaging in acts of kindness, and the rest of the campus community will be the beneficiaries of our efforts. Beyond our campus, more children will be equipped with knowledge and skills relevant to social-emotional learning, and more nonprofits and underserved communities will receive carefully compiled care packages. 18 new members are committed to our mission, now in our 4th year: can we count on you to make a difference?

Make Your Mark Campus Compassion Event!

Budget Breakdown

Your support will go directly to reaching more local youth, increasing the quality and quantity of care packages for local underserved communities, and bringing more Campus Compassion events to our UC Berkeley community!

All estimates are rough only, and actual expenditures may vary.

Care Packages	Campus Compassion Events	Lesson Plan Activities	Operating Costs
Every semester, Cascade creates a care package for an underserved community in the local area. We have packaged non-perishable food, hygiene products, and first aid for unhoused populations. Last semester, we gave care packages to low-income school children containing school supplies, valued at $4.66 per unit. Greater funding means that we can add more items to our care packages, increasing the quality, amount, or variety.	Cascade holds on-campus events throughout the semester to bring compassion and connection to the student community. Past events have involved bouquet making, self-care kits, notes of compassion, postcards and printmaking, friendship bracelets, and more! We would love to further enrich our campus by providing more creative materials and hosting more events.	Our lessons often include a hands-on or physical component to help younger children grasp the concepts. For previous lessons, we made glitter sensory jars to teach mindfulness. We hope to provide more supplies for hands-on student engagement in wellness topics.	General costs Cascade accrue from facilitating events and growing the club's presence in the Bay Area. Transportation to/from local schools Flyers and stickers for outreach, etc

Regardless of whether we reach our goal, funds will still be used for our outlined purposes: financing care packages for underserved populations, campus compassion events for the UC Berkeley community, and cascading mentorship lesson plan activities with local youth. Nevertheless, the more funds we raise, the more we can improve the quality and quantity of our aforementioned pursuits.

In December, some of the funds can be used to fund our aforementioned Campus Compassion events, on-campus activities meant to spread kindness, particularly during RRR/finals week. The rest of the funds can be used during the spring semester to finance our care packages for underserved communities and purchase supplies for hands-on activities during lessons at local schools.

Thank you for supporting CASCADE and our mission of community service!

Check out our social media!

Instagram: @cascade.berkeley

Feel free to contact us!

cascade@berkeley.edu

Our way

of Thanking You

$25