Impact an Alabama Student Service Initiative

Founded by Stephen Black, Impact Alabama was incorporated in June 2004 and has been involved in direct service to the community since August 2004. Impact is Alabama’s first nonprofit dedicated to developing and implementing substantive service-learning projects in coordination with more than twenty universities and colleges throughout the state.

Impact presents a vision of Alabama in which its young citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and public life—contributing their diverse talents to solve local and state problems, influence public policy, pursue the common good. To fulfill this vision, Impact has created four “signature initiatives,” FocusFirst, SaveFirst, SpeakFirst, and CollegeFirst.

FocusFirst: An Alabama Student Vision Initiative provides a cost-effective direct response to the vision problems of children who live in urban and rural communities across Alabama.  Under the supervision of Impact staff, undergraduate and graduate students provide free vision screenings to children, ages six months to five years, in Head Starts and lower-income daycares using high-tech photo optic scan cameras.  All children failing the screenings receive free follow-up care through Sight Savers America.  Over 2,100 college students at more than twenty colleges and universities throughout Alabama have participated with FocusFirst.  Over the last seven years, these students have screened more than 120,000 children in 67 counties across the state, with approximately 11% of the children failing the screenings and receiving free follow-up care as necessary. 

SaveFirst: A Tax Preparation and Savings Initiative trains college, graduate, and law students to provide free tax preparation services and opportunities for savings to low-income, working families—especially targeting those eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit.  In just its fifth year alone (2011), SaveFirst trained over 450 college, graduate, and law students from ten campuses who prepared tax returns for more than 4,300 working families in Alabama—helping them to claim $8.2 million in refunds and saving them approximately $1.3 million in commercial preparation fees.  This represents a 15% increase compared to the results from last season.

SpeakFirst: An Alabama Student Debate Initiative enriches the academic experience of gifted students from Birmingham’s public high schools through participation in an “all-star” debate team. This highly collaborative initiative addresses a wide array of needs created by the deficit of opportunities and resources in their local communities.  Since the inception of SpeakFirst in 2004, our students have participated in more than 550 debate practices, competed in more than 65 tournaments, and won approximately one-half of their debate rounds. SpeakFirst’s first four graduating classes have earned more than $2.8 million in college scholarships. This includes a $226,000 scholarship earned by one student to Vanderbilt University and a $120,000 scholarship earned by another to Brown University.  SpeakFirst has also established incredible partnerships with The University of Alabama, UAB, and UAHuntsville. Each of these institutions has committed to providing, in perpetuity, full, four-year academic scholarships, including tuition and fees, to Birmingham school students who complete at least three years of SpeakFirst.

CollegeFirst: An Advanced Placement Mentoring Initiative trains college and graduate students to implement a three-week, Summer Advanced Placement Institute for high-school students in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Tuscaloosa.  During the second annual Summer Advanced Placement Institute, 70 trained college students provided academic instruction in chemistry, biology, and pre-calculus to 215+ high school students from Birmingham City, Jefferson County, Huntsville City, Madison County, Tuscaloosa City, and Tuscaloosa County schools. During the 2011-12 CollegeFirst Advanced Placement Institute, instruction will be also be provided in AP English.