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The members of our military serve 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. They tirelessly defend the interests and security of our nation. Many individuals put their lives on the line to uphold the values of our nation. Once they return home, their fight is not always over; many veterans continue to face battles and wounds that come with such a great responsibility of service. We at Pebble Tossers work with a variety of organizations to support active and retired members of our military. From sending cards and care packages to supporting active military members, veterans, and their families in day-to-day activities, these efforts can have a significant ripple effect in their support and transition home.

Every May Pebble Tossers celebrates National Military Appreciation Month (NMAM). It is a declaration that encourages citizens all around the U.S. to observe the month as a symbol of unity. NMAM honors the current and former members of the U.S. Armed Forces, including those who have died in the pursuit of freedom.

Pebble Tossers not only supports this declaration, but also understands that action and awareness go hand in hand. This month contains a variety of wonderful opportunities for you and your family to serve together and benefit the military members of our community in need. So, how can you honor our Troops and Veterans during this Memorial Day weekend? Partake to demonstrate your support:

check out these ways to pay tribute to our veterans on Memorial Day weekend:

• Memorial Day Tribute at Brook Run Park Veterans Memorial
• Cauble Park at Patriots Point
• City of Woodstock
• Salute to the Troops in Stone Mountain Park
• Memorial Day Parade in Dacula

visit these virtual avenues of support:

• National Memorial Day Concert on PBS
• Take a Virtual Tour of a War Memorial
• Virtual Memorial Day Tribute Hosted by Alpharetta and the Rotary Club
• Roswell Remembers
• Fly a Flag at Home: One of the simplest ways of celebrating Memorial Day at home is to place an American flag outside your home. Take note: Memorial Day has its own flag etiquette. The American flag should be flown at half-mast from sunrise until noon, then raised to full mast for the rest of the holiday.

There are also a number of ways to get involved outside of Memorial Day weekend. Please reference our service calendar and cause area page for a number of service projects such as Operation Gratitude, Veterans Empowerment Organization (VEO), and Atlanta VA Medical Center (VAMC). These organizations serve current and former members of the military in a variety of ways and need many volunteers to assist with their efforts. Pebble Tossers members can click here to register.

We hope that you decide to join Pebble Tossers in honoring our military not only in the month of May, but year-round. Serving those who serve our country represents the core values of the Pebble Tossers community.

Pebble Tossers stands with our Asian and Asian American, Pacific Islander family members, friends, partners, volunteers, and members. We despise the violence and racism directed at them and are especially horrified by the murders of the Asian-American women on March 16th in our community.

The anti-Asian hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination that have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are disturbing, but they are not new. The tragic loss of these lives should remind us that we, as Americans, have a long way to go towards true equality, inclusion, and justice.

No child, youth, or family can thrive or should live with the threat of violence. In honor of the lives lost to racist violence, Pebble Tossers recommits to the important work of developing youth who embrace a sense of civic responsibility to our community, and we strive to provide opportunities where this sense of responsibility leads to a feeling of inclusion and belonging.

When youth and teens volunteer at Pebble Tossers projects, they introduce themselves and meet those they serve with as well as those they serve. They work alongside people from a variety of cultures, races, genders, and ideologies, yet they all work towards a common goal of helping our community thrive. We strive to cultivate a welcoming environment at our projects, which leads to an inherent sense of belonging and desire to serve with us again.

We, at Pebble Tossers, will not tolerate discrimination of any kind. As an organization, we will provide intercultural assessments for our staff, board members, and advisory council in order to build and strengthen intercultural competency. We will continue to work with a wide variety of nonprofit organizations that serve the most marginalized of our brothers and sisters. We will continue to offer high-impact projects serving diverse populations. We will continue to develop educational curriculum based on social-emotional learning and positive psychology while incorporating leadership and social justice initiatives.

We hope you stand with us against this violence and work with us to equip and empower youth to lead through service. This summer, Pebble Tossers will host “Toss Up Dinners”, where we gather families together virtually (and hopefully in-person) for civic-minded conversations about relevant topics such as social justice, racial equality, gender equality, and our 12 service cause areas. If you are interested in serving on a planning committee or hosting a dinner, please contact us at outreach@pebbletossers.org.

Jennifer Guynn
Founder + Executive Director, Pebble Tossers
March 18, 2021

Pebble Tossers is a proud recipient of the See Beautiful grant

The See Beautiful grant was created to fund nonprofits visions of creating sustainable beauty in our world

Atlanta, GA – Pebble Tossers, Atlanta’s leading youth service organization, is excited to announce that it has been selected as a recipient of the See Beautiful Grant. The See Beautiful Grant is awarded quarterly to non-profits for creating sustainable beauty in our communities. Pebble Tossers was announced as a grant recipient after a thorough and competitive application process.

Pebble Tossers partners with 65 area nonprofits; linking volunteers to service projects and organizing its own projects covering 12 major cause areas. Its mission is to empower and equip youth to lead through service. See Beautiful has awarded more than  $200,000 through its grant program and strategic giving initiatives. The See Beautiful grant will assist Pebble Tossers in its implementation of a new, immersive service experience. The grant will fund  educational components at all of the Pebble Tossers service projects to reinforce social emotional learning skills such as self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

“Pebble Tossers is honored by the recent grant from See Beautiful. Their confidence in our youth volunteers’ ability to bring beauty through service is humbling and we plan on continuing to make an impact which will affect generations to come,” says Jennifer Guynn, Founding Executive Director.

Pebble Tossers encourages and empowers youth to see the beauty in themselves as well as the potential and power they have to make this world a better place. We are teaching this generation to be empathetic and ethical global citizens who will “start a ripple of giving”, fueled by kindness, inclusivity, justice and compassion.

About Pebble Tossers

Pebble Tossers is the premier local youth service organization focused on providing families with a comprehensive path to youth development through service to others, from preschool to graduation, or “nap to cap.” Our easy-to-use volunteer portal allows families to find and sign up for volunteer projects that interest them. With Pebble Tossers, volunteers can simply sign up, show up, and serve to create a ripple of giving in our community.

About See Beautiful

See Beautiful™  is a philanthropic company providing inspiring, ethically-sourced products that create more beautiful in the process. With every purchase, your purchase helps fund carefully vetted, sustainable projects of non-profits. 

See beautiful in yourself. See beautiful in others. Create more beautiful in the world.

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As we reach the end of an unquestionably difficult year, it’s a positive thing to be able to say that the first Teen Leadership cohort is reaching the program’s midpoint. While no one could’ve predicted that 2020 might not be the ideal year to launch a brand-new program, perhaps the timing is actually somewhat serendipitous for a program such as this one to come into existence.

As we’ve witnessed, factors invisible to the naked eye can bring life to a screeching halt on the local and global scale.

In these moments, we depend on our appointed leaders to make swift and responsible decisions that will certainly affect us, our loved ones, and those within our communities. We also look to the people we see as leaders in our personal lives to guide us through times of uncertainty as well.

The 32 teens that makeup Pebble Tossers’ inaugural Teen Leadership Program are cultivating emotional intelligence at a time in history where the negative impacts of leadership, in the absence of emotional intelligence, are felt almost immediately and prove more costly to society than life as usual.

Now, more than ever, and in real-time, we can witness the fallout that results from global leaders who lack the self-awareness to question their own motives, the social awareness to practice human decency, the self-management skills to inspire discipline, and the relationship skills to establish and maintain trust.

These are the tenets of social-emotional learning (SEL) and the foundation upon which the Teen Leadership Program is built. These concepts fuel the TLP mission to Serve, Lead, Succeed.

Now, as we stand at the halfway mark and can see where we’re headed, it’s good to reflect on where we’ve been…

Sunday, August 23rd, the program officially launched. Woodruff Arts Center Director of Recruitment & Employee Engagement and motivational speaker Alex Desiderio kicked things off with a Volunteer 101 presentation.

“It’s about establishing a personal presence.” -Alex Desiderio
On leadership and service project planning

For our second meeting we had the great honor of welcoming Licensed Therapist and University of Southern Mississippi associate professor, Dr. Leslie Anderson. Dr. Anderson put the students in the frame of mind where they were encouraged to interrogate their true motivations behind their acts of service.

“Service is more than “helping the needy” or attempting to capture an Instagramable selfie. It’s about being able to see yourself in the eyes of those you seek to serve.” -Dr. Leslie Anderson
On motivations behind volunteering for community service projects

We were then joined by retired NFL player (New England Patriots: UGA Football), author and founder of Share the Magic Foundation, Ind. Malcolm Mitchell, for our October meeting. Mitchell shared with us the degree to which reading has impacted his life and how education has informed the leader he’s become now, off the field, as an author and entrepreneur.

“Reading unlocks potential. It’s as simple as that. I promise you that if you read every single day, you will grow; it’s impossible not to.” -Malcolm Mitchell
On the powerful benefits of reading

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we welcomed Bank of America Community Relations Manager and service project veteran Cherie Wilson. Growing up, while other kids were playing sports, Cherie volunteered her time and effort to help her community. Her passion for community service lasted through college, her professional life, and even to this day. Cherie’s presentation may have been the most relevant to the Pebble Tossers’ cause as a whole and comes at a perfect time as the teens enter the program’s service project phase.

“You have to learn how to tell your story. If you want to inspire others to get behind your cause, sell them on the narrative that inspired you to get behind this cause.” -Cherie Wilson
On using your personal “secret weapon” and “super powers” as a guide for service and career paths.

The caliber of speakers willing to share their wisdom with us is certainly felt within the program, even in the virtual format.

“I love all of the different speakers. I feel like I’ve learned so much already, and we haven’t even been together in person. It’s really amazing.”
-Gracie Rosenberg

“The program and the speakers have definitely challenged my mind to think about things that I wouldn’t normally think about.”
-Ainsley McCaa

Now that the teens have put their heads together and decided on three service projects, they’re in the process of dividing themselves into groups based on where they think their interests and talents will be the most useful. This is really the reason many of them joined the program in the first place.

“I know for me I just wanted to get to know new people and get to find new service opportunities, and just grow my leadership skills as a whole, and this seemed like a really great way to do it.”
-Gracie Rosenberg

“I really want to find like-minded people who want to address issues within the community and improve my leadership skills.”
-Alex Farquharson

Ultimately, this group of young adults have an altruistic fire that burns within them. No one is forcing them to be in a leadership program; they all found their way here by their own means. What they’re learning through the curriculum, they already possess; but the time they spend together working on their own service projects will further uncover and strengthen these leadership skills.

“This program is a wonderful training ground for young, compassionate, and brilliant leaders. As an advisor, I am thrilled to see the creativity and drive in the young hearts & minds. Our current project is focused on planting trees in the memory of those who passed away due to COVID. Besides the raw power of the central theme, the team came up with great ideas – like a type of flora specific to the local region with flower colors symbolizing hope.  

Outcome driven meetings wonderfully curated guest speakers and reflection writing – Jen & Ben have made this program a powerful part of kids’ leadership toolkit.  Thank you, Pebble Tossers!”

-Anand Sathiyamurthy, Teen Leadership Program advisor