Are fame and fortune calling your name? Well, they are now.

We’re scouring the city’s high schools for the next great Picasso in our Students Give Back! Mural Contest. We’ll pick one budding artist to design the signature mural to be painted on New York Cares Day at one lucky NYC public school.

We’ll also feature the top three designs on newyorkcares.org and award the 2nd and 3rd place winners with some special prizes of their own. If you think you can handle all the attention your art will get, apply now. Do you have what it takes?

Preparation for New York Cares Day 2010 is officially underway. Beyond the good it will do for schools on October 23, it’s also an excellent opportunity to gain leadership experience.

We need Site Captains, Team Leaders, and Registration Leaders to be the face of New York Cares out in the field. You don’t need to be an experienced Team Leader, or even attend orientation – we’ll make sure you feel confident in your role.

We also need artists to design amazing murals for volunteers to paint in classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds. Your art will be seen by thousands of community members, and teachers tell us the best part of New York Cares Day is seeing students’ faces when they walk in the door and see how beautiful their school looks.

Whatever your talents, help us make this amazing day of service happen! Learn more about these roles, or contact nycd@newyorkcares.org.

It’s finally here – have you found your paintbrushes yet? Register now for New York Cares Day 2010 and join 7,000 volunteers to paint murals and decorate classrooms, organize libraries, and spruce up playgrounds at over 75 New York City public schools!

The work you put in on New York Cares Day is worth well over $1 million in service to the New York City public school system, and its priceless to the kids who get to come back to their brand, shiny new schools in the fall.

New York Cares Day is an amazing day of service and a critical fundraiser for New York Cares. The $20 registration fee is dedicated towards buying supplies for the event and ensuring that New York Cares’ 11,000 other projects keep running throughout the year.

So, don’t forget to register! You can sign up with friends or colleagues as a team or come on your own. We can’t make you come, but we can guarantee you’ll have an awesome, fulfilling time if you do.

New York Cares Day may seem like the distant future, but we’ve been visiting schools all over the city to plan projects – and they definitely need our help on October 23.

One East New York charter school in its inaugural year is currently totally empty, with white walls, empty shelves, and spotless closets. We hope New York Cares Day volunteers come with paintbrushes swinging when its time to turn this bare canvas into a work of art!

At another school, we found four 25-year-old never-used Atari computers in a storage closet. We can’t wait to get in there to clean and organize the space. If you work at a public school that could use a little love and care this fall, apply now to become a New York Cares Day project site.

Volunteer registration opens on July 20, so check back soon for more details!

Do your classrooms need a new coat of paint? Could your hallways use some colorful murals? Does your library desperately need to be reorganized? Does your playground need livening up?

Complete the New York Cares Day School Application by Friday, May 14, and your school could be one of the 100+ schools that we’ll send thousands of volunteers to revitalize on our fall day of service.

New York Cares Day takes place on Saturday, October 23, 2010. The event is free for participating schools. Apply now!

Congratulations and thank you to the thousands of caring New Yorkers who took part in New York Cares Day 2009. In just one day they painted hundreds of classrooms and hallways, organized dozens of libraries, painted hundreds of amazing murals, and much more at 117 public schools city-wide.

Thanks to them, on Monday morning more than 88,000 children will find their schools magically transformed into wonderful, vibrant places to learn and grow. They also raised $235,000 in support of our year-round volunteer programs.

Our ED, Gary Bagley, with New York City’s Chief Service Officer, Diahann Billings-Burford, and the New York Cares Day Civic Corps team at P.S. 319 M

As the day draws to a close, volunteers are finishing up some amazing murals at 117 schools. Send in your pictures from the day to blog@newyorkcares.org or post them to our Facebook page, and check back next week to see more of the projects completed on New York Cares Day 2009.

P.S. 84 Q

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NY1′s coverage of New York Cares Day in Brooklyn this morning is now online. Watch it here.

Look out for NY1′s interview with Site Captain Sue Craine in Staten Island also. Volunteers came from as far away as Tulsa, OK, to paint murals and plant bulbs at I.S. 49 SI.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Brooklyn Councilwoman Letisha James came to P.S. 67 in Brooklyn to thank our volunteers and deliver a proclamation honoring New York Cares Day. To thank Marty for stopping by, our mural artist, Melissa Jacobson, added his pet parrot, Beep, to the jungle themed cafeteria.

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Thanks to the teams from JPMorgan Chase, MS&L, and International Baccalaureate for inspiring young learners at P.S. 362 K – Hellenic Classical Charter School.

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