One of our incredible VISTA features is Katelan Newman, who is doing her service year at South Bronx United. She’s a proud South Bronx native, so her service quite literally ‘hits home.’ SBU was founded in just 2009, and since then, has been focusing on serving at-risk and immigrant youth to “build character, teamwork, and leadership skills so that they can achieve success in high school, college, their careers and communities, and beyond” through soccer.”

Katelan has been working closely with the Development Director, Communications Manager, and Executive Director of SBU to oversee and facilitate fundraising efforts. The work she does involves event planning and coordination, updating our donor database, fundraising research, and developing relationships with our donors.

Katelan prefaces exciting things in store for 2021: “I'm looking forward to continuing our fundraising efforts with 2 important annual fundraising events: Power of 11, and Charity Cup. They kick off in May and August, respectively. I’m also really excited about taking a leadership role in SBU Academy’s Journalism Club this month.”

Katelan’s work has been especially commendable for her deft use of online alternatives to fundraising, resulting in significant monies being raised for SBU’s mission. She says, “While we were faced with many challenges along the way, we still managed to reach and surpass our goal of $160,000! I was a bit doubtful that we would be able to pull it off, but as always, the SBU community (who we often refer to as family) came through and helped us across the finish line.”

We thank Katelan for her genuine care and tireless work in serving the South Bronx community, and can’t wait to see the impact of her service year accumulate and touch more lives. There’s bright things ahead for Katelan and the communities she impacts through her work.