RAFT – Resource Area For Teaching

Parking is always great here .
It can be a little hard to find so plan on mapping it out real good an starting out a lil early.
This is a great organization that helps with teachers and schools.
They provide projects, tools, and all kinds of things and I help them out because its something I believe in.
I like the people here everyone’s nice here.
The bathrooms are really nice here too and they even have a break room with vending machines here .
The water works real good here too.
I learned alot of cool things here
This is a great cause to volunteer for

Have volunteered here twice with my company. The tasks can be pretty tedious (we counted hundreds if not thousands of beads last time we volunteered) but its for a good cause so i didn’t mind much. Come with a group that you can have fun with to make the tasks fly by.
I love that these types of materials are available to all educators. They use everyday items donated from companies to teach kids about math, science, along with other subjects.
This is a great organization to help out and i will be coming back!

This is my 3^rd time volunteering at RAFT and it is so amazing to me how dedicated people are to to the program.
Mike is a great coordinator, he helped me set up a team building volunteering event for 17 people! He was also very flexible when we had to shift the time out for an hour due to emergencies.
Great place to volunteer. Will definitely come back again.

Came here to do volunteer work during the Unilocal Helps event in January with a couple other friends in January and it was a pretty fun experience!
Unfortunately during our first visit, there was some miscommunication between RAFT and GoVoluntr with their volunteer schedule so when we showed up, they were like … «What are you here for?» o_​O After that, I was like… :face palm: oh boy what a waste of time… BUT fortunately the staff at this sunnyvale location were very helpful and directed us to go to the san jose location to do our volunteer work there instead and also credited us the time we were there waiting and driving time too (30min). Very thoughtful!
The Sunnyvale location is not the actual RAFT store itself (that’s in San Jose). It’s mostly for volunteering and they generally prefer taking in big groups (5 – 30 people) rather than individuals. If you want to sign up to volunteer as an individual, they recommended the San Jose location and you can sign up on their calendar:
. Also if you want to bring minors, they have to be at least 7 years old, sign a permission form, and be accompanied by an adult volunteer at all times. I heard from Chris that they’ve had Girl Scouts come and do projects here from time to time so it does seem like a kid-​friendly volunteer opportunity if that’s what you’re looking for.
At the Sunnyvale location, there are 2 «stations» you can work at: kits or stock.
KITS: When they ask you to work on building the kits, they basically have you sit in the first room and count out enough parts for each kit and put them in bags or tie them together. Much like an assembly line in that you stick to one specific task (ie putting 3 paper clips in a baggie, tying 3 straws together, etc) most of the time.
STOCK: I personally prefer to work in the stock room, which is in the back. They have pallets of boxes out there that they ask you to open and sort out the contents inside. Last time I helped unbox stationary cards that were donated to RAFT and sorted them out by type. Sounds mundane, but I found that to be more fun (and more of a workout) than sitting in the room counting out beads.
I really enjoyed my time volunteering at this location — more so than the San Jose one since everyone here seems much nicer and more welcoming. Plus getting to go to Unilocal’s Good Karma Ball was icing on the cake! :]

Awesome place to do volunteer work. RAFT repurposes many used items to make useful learning kits for teachers to use in their classroom. Any profits made one sales are used to further subsidize the kits. As a volunteer you can help children learn!

Volunteered at here last week, and it was a great experience!
RAFT’s mission is to provides innovative project ideas, hands-​on learning materials, professional development and teaching support to pre-​K-​12 classroom.
Their projects are so creative, and it’s offer to teachers at a very affordable price. This make the volunteering experience much more meaningful.