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Do you do volunteer work?

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mvansand76:


Hi! This is just one of the topics we were thinking of when we started pondering about this new forum!

Do you do volunteer work? Or: have you done volunteer work?

What do you do exactly?

How long have you been doing this?

What do you like about volunteer work?

If you have a paid job / or are a fulltime mother/father too, how do you fit it in your daily life?


I will give my own answers in a seperate post!  8)

mvansand76:
Do you do volunteer work? Or: have you done volunteer work?
Yes, I do volunteer work for a patient association. I work as an editor for them, proofreading and writing articles. Also, for two years (2003-2005) I taught Dutch language to Moroccan and Turkish children and had my own radio program in a university medical centre.

What do you do exactly?
See above!

How long have you been doing this?
2,5 years! How time flies!

What do you like about volunteer work?
That it allows me to write articles about very important issues that need to be addressed: political issues, health care issues, trying to deal with chronic pain or how to get rid of it. The magazine we publish is very informative to people who are only just dealing with Repetitive Strain Injury and have no idea where to turn.

If you have a paid job / or are a fulltime mother/father too, how do you fit it in your daily life?
It's difficult sometimes. The reason why I stopped working at the other two volunteer jobs was because I couldn't combine it with my new job as a translator and editor anymore. Therefore I chose one volunteer job to continue with...

Ellemeno:
I have been feeling for a while like I need to get into doing more volunteer work.  I used to, but then had a tiny child and it felt hard.  But now I do have the time.  

I was very inspired by Sicko, the new movie by Michael Moore about America's lack of health care for its citizens, and the contrast between that and various other countries.  I am thinking about looking into how I can support the effort to improve that.

One of my favorite volunteer things I ever did was I taught one man to read.  Troy worked in a lumber factory, where they turned trees into boards to build with.  He worked with the sawdust, hauling, hauling, hauling.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays after work, he would hurry home to shower and get the sawdust out of very pore, put on his very best clothes, and meet me at the local library for an hour and a half.  When we first started we had a hard time simply understanding the other.  I was from a college-educated New York culture and he was from African-American deep country Mississippi.  We spent a fair amount of time saying, "Hunh?" to each other at first.  :)

But we were smart and learned to understand each other.  He worked hard.  Progress was slowish at first, as he worked with paper and pencil and books for the first time in his life, and as I learned how to impart this skill I took as much for granted as I did breathing.  After about 6 months, we could both see huge progress and he started really getting not just how to be taught, but how to teach himself.  We were on the front page of the local newspaper once, and with various other achievements, that is one of the ones I am still proudest of.

When we started working together, he had a 3 year old he couldn't read to.  By the end of our nearly two years together, he could read to Troy Jr. and even help him begin to learn to read himself....:)

Front-Ranger:
What a great story, Clarissa!

My main volunteer work is to collect the seeds of wildflowers in the fall. I belong to a group that does this and sends the seeds to a nursery. In the spring, we sell the little plants to the community. By doing this, we are trying to perpetuate the native plants.

Ellemeno:
Mel and Lee, those both sound way cool and wonderful.  Let me say thank you for all the people who don't know to, but would if they could!  :)

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