The Common Ground Teen Center in Washington, Pennsylvania, is a welcoming place for everyone. Although Roman, Daisy, Zay and Bailey are too young to regularly attend, they have all visited on occasion and enjoyed spending time with the friendly local teens, including Xavier who participate in activities and learning opportunities there. The Teen Center is a no-judgement zone and helps teens to navigate difficult social issues, while developing them as community leaders. It is a great place to make friends, learn and just hang out. Everyone is welcome, exactly as they are.

The Teen Center has an annual fundraiser, which is a See-Saw Marathon. Teens volunteer to spend 24 hours see-sawing non-stop to raise funds for the center. The kids saw the fundraiser as an opportunity to help raise even more funds that can be used toward the center's operating costs and programs. On October 5, which was 5-for-5 Challenge Day, Roman and Xaiver both made videos asking the community to donate to the teen center and that GBU would match all donations up to$5,000 through the Give Back Groups program. The videos and social posts raised $5,002 for a total of $10,002 after the match for the one-day campaign!

In 2021, the Washington Park was looking for a way to raise funds for much-needed pool repairs and decided to bring back a previously popular event called Dark in the Park. The all-volunteer event features a spooky hayride through the park with various haunted scenes throughout. Roman, who has always been a huge Halloween fan, volunteered to set up his collection of animatronics for the occasion. The event was incredibly successful and led to the pool repairs being made and pool being able to open for the 2022 summer season. The park decided to repeat the event in 2022 to raise additional funds for the park. This year Xavier, Bailey and Zay joined in, and the team used community project funds to purchase some additional spooky props to add a walk-through haunted house that would be part of the event. The team set up animatronics, lighting and props and then got into costume (and character) to scare thousands of attendees over the Halloween weekend. 

The event raised over $7,000 for the park and the kids enjoyed planning, organizing, setting up (with a bit of help from their parents) the haunted scene and deciding where they would stand to scare those walking though. Next year, the park hopes to attract even more volunteers for every task from concession stand sales, to story narration and haunted scene creation. The GBU "Give-Back Kids," as they are calling themselves, hope to add more friends to their group to be able to help out more in their community.

You can give back too! Simply submit your fundraiser or community projects at gbucares.org/give-back-groups. You can receive matching funds of $1,000 for each GBU member in your group, up to $5,000, or apply for a community project reimbursement of $250 per member up to $1,000!