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SweatMonkey's very first volunteer success story was its own.

SweatMonkey was founded in 2005 by Sophomore high school student Callahan Fore to be a place where students could learn about volunteer opportunities in their communities, and organizations could find volunteers.

Today, the site has grown to include all of service learning's best practices and now includes a complete suite of the necessary tools to encourage students to explore new interests, initiate connections, track and record engagements, and gain real-world experience as they grow and develop while contributing to a larger cause.

SweatMonkey is run by a handful of full-time staff, an active Senior Executive Advisory Board, and works to continually grow with every new school, student and organization that joins.

Now, thousands of local and global organizations collaborate and manage their Youth Services program on SweatMonkey's safe and protected, web-enabled, all-in-one platform.

To learn more about SweatMonkey in the news, see our News section.

History

Callahan Fore was a 15 year-old sophomore at All Saint's Academy in Winter Haven, Florida, when he began to look for ways to satisfy his school's 70-hour service learning requirements.

The challenge he faced right away was a lack of posted or announced local opportunities that would be appropriate and available for students his age. Callahan did some digging, and discovered that his problem had a flip side: community service organizations had no way to safely contact qualified student volunteers whose skills and interests matched their unique needs.

Since necessity is the mother of invention, Callahan – a Social Entrepreneur before the term was even coined -- joined forces with 20 of his fellow, like-minded students from 4 area high schools, and they all got to work to create a solution: SweatMonkey.org, a website where students could search and find organizations whose missions help solve local social, economic and environmental problems.

Their project was eventually adopted by Service Learning Expert Kristin Joos, Ph.D. at University of Florida's Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and she began to advise the team as they spent many hours brainstorming best practices around the Fore dining room table. Within months, the first generation of SweatMonkey.org was up and running.

In Callahan's own words, circa 2005:

"The student population as a workforce is no longer out of reach – we are now at your fingertips. Teach us what we are ready to learn." - Callahan Fore

"Students are willing and even required to volunteer in their community and work, but no one can tell them where to start. With over 77,000,000 baby boomers retiring in the next three decades, won't any of these folks help a student? Have they forgotten how much help they needed when they were our age?

I knew I wasn't alone in the dilemma, and that if I could find an easier way, then everyone would benefit from a solution. With the hard work of 20 fellow students from three other high schools, we combined our efforts and created a website that would make it easy for every student, free of charge, to help themselves and their community."

"And why the name? Well, my dad called us MONKEYS as kids, and taught us about the importance of building SWEAT equity in everything we do. Thus, SweatMonkey was born."

Today, SweatMonkey joins thousands of local and global organizations in the United States and 7 other countries. We welcome you to become its newest member. Sign up today.