Confessions of a Volunteer

The Experience

On Day 4 I volunteered with ArtsMemphis at Conservation Through Art Family Day at Shelby Farms. One of the first things I learned that day was how ArtsMemphis views art access for Memphis residents. Barb Gelb told me about a program called Arts Access, which “ensures the arts are available to those who can’t always afford the price of admission.” Barb explained that they want every family and every child to experience things like the ballet, the symphony, and live theater because it makes people more aware of the world around them. She believes that “the arts enrich lives through building confidence, creativity and in ways we don’t even understand yet.” The stack of passes for Arts Access dwindled quickly at the event – obviously a coveted find for the numerous and diverse families that experienced the arts that day. Children were exposed to Shakespeare, Voice of the South’s Ugly Duckling performance, fishing, work dog demonstrations, and duck calling.

At the event, I met Sean – a high school freshman, who told me that he’d volunteered numerous places in the last year. I asked Sean about his experiences and which opportunity he liked best. Without hesitation he replied, “Picking up trash.” Ever eloquent, I responded simply. “Huh?” I asked. He laughed. He said that he liked it because he worked with his friends and he could tell that they had accomplished something – the park was in noticeably better shape when they left. Thank you, Sean, for reminding me that it’s not necessarily about what you’re doing as much as whether you feel like you’re making a difference and having fun while you do it.

I also met a group of high school students who had been assigned to manage parking for the event. I was asked to oversee the process so I walked up the hill from the Visitor Center and met four bright and talkative high school students. I started laying out a plan for parking, but stopped myself – these were smart young adults! I thought about Melonie Goolsby and what she taught me about students: it’s amazing what they can accomplish when we just get out of the way. I realized that they didn’t need me! They already had the problem solving and critical thinking skills to solve that issue and many others. These four students worked together, developed, and managed a parking system. Just think what else they can accomplish.

ArtsMemphis believes that exposure to the arts can develop creativity and appreciation for the world around us. If you haven’t attended one of the many opportunities through ArtsMemphis, you should take a look at their packed Event Calendar or consider contributing through one of the avenues below.

How to Help

Sign up to volunteer with ArtsMemphis on their volunteer website.

You can donate! Help fund worthy programs like Arts Access.

You can bet a guest reviewer! Check out their Rants and Raves section to review music, plays and more!

Attend an event. Look at their Event Calendar for upcoming activities. I went to Artafactor and it was great!

For more information about the Arts Access program contact Barb at bgelb@artsmemphis.org

If you’re thinking about volunteering with this organization or in general, but aren’t quite ready to jump in, email me at sarah.petschonek@gmail.com. Thinking about helping is the first step!

What comes after the 30 Days of Mission Memphis?  Volunteer Bound! I’m traveling across the country to promote volunteerism and I want to take you with me!

The Experience

You may not know it, but the wish granting business is hard work! The Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Mid-South grants more than 200 wishes every year! There is a lot of work behind the scenes: staff and volunteers devote their time to make this happen, and there are many ways to help. One way to contribute is by volunteering and raising funds at one of their events during the year. This weekend, that’s exactly what I did.

This Saturday, I saw the sunrise for the first time in a long time. It took a lot of effort to pry myself out of bed in the dark and head down to Mississippi for the Race for a Reason 5K. I finally crawled out of bed around 6:15, but by that time, Melonie Goolsby had already been hard at work. Melonie volunteered to run the Honor Society at Southaven Intermediate School and wanted to give her 3rd, 4th and 5th graders a chance to think beyond themselves: “People try to put a limit on what these kids can do, but it’s amazing what they can accomplish if you let them.” The race went off without a hitch, and afterward she asked her Honors students to raise their hands and she praised them for their dedication to Make-A-Wish. The kids beamed. You could tell they were proud of what they had achieved. After hearing the announcement, one of the runners was so inspired that he walked over to Melonie and handed her $100 for Make-A-Wish.

Melonie told me she had two goals for this event: she wanted to teach the kids about philanthropy and raise enough money to grant a wish. I’m sure she is well on her way to accomplishing both.

The Volunteer Coordinator for Make-A-Wish, Marcy Seidel, told me that the success of Make-A-Wish is due in large part to people like Melonie and her students. The Mid-South chapter of Make-A-Wish has more than 400 volunteers that contribute to their mission and some people have been volunteering for more than 20 years! With this in mind, Marcy’s goal is to make sure that every volunteer has a positive experience. She told me that before assigning a task to a volunteer, she always asks herself whether it’s something that she would want to do. I asked Marcy about her hopes for their volunteers and what she wants each person to take away from the experience. Her answer was so eloquent that I dare not paraphrase! “What I want most for my volunteers to take away after volunteering for Make-A-Wish Mid-South is a feeling of accomplishing our mission, which is granting the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength, and joy. Our volunteers work with families that don’t have a lot of joy in their lives. These children spend so much time at hospitals and not a lot of time enjoying their young lives. I want my volunteers to feel that they have changed that for a brief time by being a part of bringing joy into these kids’ lives by granting their one true wish.”

How can you ask for a better volunteer experience than that?

How to Help

There are so many ways you can help Make-A-Wish Mid-South!

1) Volunteer at an event. There are numerous events throughout the year that benefit Make-A-Wish and if you’re looking for a one-time commitment, this is a great way to get involved. The next big event, Season of Wishes is December 10-14.

2) Become a Wish Granter! Believe it or not, this is their greatest need for volunteers! Imagine the joy you could bring by being a wish granter! It’s a big responsibility – you’d be planning and coordinating a wish for one of their wish kids, but Marcy said that after you do it once you’re hooked! Apply to volunteer

3) Be an Airport Greeter. Make-A-Wish thinks of everything. As you might imagine, many wishes involve air travel (15 kids fly out this month), but this can be very daunting for a family who has never flown before. Airport greeters meet the family at the airport and walk them through the whole process. If you’re comfortable with flying and knowledgeable about the airport, this is a great way to get involved. Apply to volunteer

4) Serve as an Office Angel. Make-A-Wish relies on their office angels to pitch in at headquarters. While there’s some filing and data entry, you can also help Marcy with volunteer awards or you get to organize the Wish Closet! The Wish Closet is full of toys and costumes used for wish granting and with all the activity, it needs straightening and organizing. Apply to volunteer

5) Donate! Make-A-Wish runs on volunteers and donations. You can make a donation of any size. Donate.

Email Marcy at mseidel@midsouth.wish.org and she’ll help you find the right volunteer opportunity for you.

Website: http://midsouth.wish.org/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/makeawish.midsouth

** Update – Melonie’s students raised $3,500 for Make-A-Wish! They need to raise $1,500 more in order to reach their goal of granting a wish. If you’d like to help them achieve their goal, please contact Melonie by <a href=”Melonie Goolsby ;”>email. **

Race for a Reason 5K. Volunteering Day 3

Race for a Reason t-shirt

Melonie Goolsby. Volunteer Coordinator Extraordinaire!

If you’re thinking about volunteering with this organization or in general, but aren’t quite ready to jump in, email me at sarah.petschonek@gmail.com. Thinking about helping is the first step!

What comes after the 30 Days of Mission Memphis?  Volunteer Bound! I’m traveling across the country to promote volunteerism and I want to take you with me!

What’s your mission?

If you had 30 days to work on anything you wanted, what would it be?

When I was planning this project, there were many paths and opportunities grabbing for my attention, but nothing captured my imagination like this. I knew it before I named it – I’d been dreaming of this project for a long time.

I love to volunteer…and in that way, this work is selfish. I do it because I love it. But I’ve realized that some people don’t love it.  Initially, this was hard for me to understand, but in thinking about it, I’ve realized that many people dislike it because they’ve had a bad volunteer experience. I’ve been there – I’ve definitely had some terrible experiences, but ultimately, there’s something that keeps me coming back. I know what it’s like to give to someone who truly needs to be helped. I’ve given a bag of food to a hungry woman and her small son. I’ve given a blanket to a man sleeping on cold concrete. What is it that motivates you?

I’ll capture a range of ways to volunteer: film festivals, soup kitchens, economic development, homelessness, puppies, and even honest-to-goodness wish granting. This project is meant to show all the wonderful ways to contribute and my hope is that you will read about an experience that will move you to make a difference.

I’m not saying that volunteering is always fun or always easy. There are bad volunteer experiences out there and I fully acknowledge that. But there are also incredible experiences. Life-changing experiences. People you’ll meet, things you’ll see, and situations you’ll find that can change the way you think about your world and your role in it.

So . . .

Volunteer.  Or donate.  Or help in your own way.

I’m going to do it for 30 days and I’m going to tell you about it every step of the way each day.

Here’s what I ask from you: volunteer once . . . aim for ONE – one person or one place or one day. Start with one and go from there.

Thanks for reading. Please share and tell me about your adventures in volunteering.

@spetschonek

#MissionMEM

Mission Memphis: 30 Days of Volunteering

What comes after the 30 Days of Mission Memphis?  Volunteer Bound! I’m traveling across the country to promote volunteerism and I want to take you with me!

I’m very excited to announce my new project:

Mission Memphis: 30 Days of Volunteering

I’m committing to volunteer with 30 organizations in the 30 days of November and I’m going to blog about each experience!

My goal is to highlight some of the lesser-known organizations in Memphis while also showing the wide range of volunteer opportunities and how those opportunities can be rewarding, fun and meaningful. My hope is that I’ll bring some much needed exposure to our great non-profits and encourage others to get out of their comfort zones and volunteer in our community.

So far, I’ve booked 20 of the 30 days.

Is there a Memphis-area group who needs volunteers? Send them my way!

More details to come…

The Sweet Potato Dash. Check out a great new blog by my friend Caroline. She’s talking about a topic dear to my heart – hunger and food insecurity.

My dad can make, fix, construct, deconstruct, build or install just about anything. For those of you who know my dad, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Luckily, I had the opportunity to learn what to do (and what not to do!) by helping him with all of these adventures: installing a sprinkler system, tiling a floor, scraping the ceiling (that’s a story on it’s own) and the list goes on and on.  All of this to say, my dad took the time to teach me a valuable life skill.  Power tools are your friends!

Now, I know I am an unlikely wielder of power tools. I’m a girl. I’m short, I have freckles and long fingernails, but I can work a wet saw with the best of them. Given our shared experience of power tools, and our love of giving back to the community, I was really excited when my dad and I signed up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.

When we pulled up to the build site, I saw that the houses were early on in the build process, which meant that the “light stuff” like painting and landscaping would come later. We were fully in the construction phase. Bingo! There were table saws whirling and saw dust floating through the air. When the table saws stopped, the site was punctuated with the sounds of nail guns. Power tool central!

We made our way over to the volunteer coordinator and asked for our assignments. I was imagining all the cool new tools I could try. I was ready for a challenge, ready to show my awesome skills, and work next to my dad.  So you can imagine my reaction when the coordinator gave me something that every power tool junkie wants – a hammer. A hammer?  A hammer!  Dumbfounded, I stared down at the hammer hanging in my hand. Perplexed, I turned and looked at the men wielding nail guns. I looked back at my hammer. And then, slowly, I looked at my dad. He could see it all over my face.  After a lifetime of relevant work, knowledge and experience, I had been instantly judged and deemed incapable of a greater contribution.

Unlike most, I had someone to vouch for my skills. My dad convinced our coordinator that I could hold my own and that he’d be there to help me if I needed something. It was a game changer. I spent the rest of the day working with the table saw and I accomplished a lot more than would have with a hammer. And for the rest of the day, the coordinator treated me differently and gave me more opportunities to contribute.

This experience was not unique to me. There are hundreds of homeless and low-income people in our community who are instantly judged because of the way they look.  Would you believe that the man sleeping under the overpass used to own his own construction company? Would you know that the man in rags at the soup kitchen used to be a college professor? These people don’t look like they have the right skills and experience to make a contribution. And if you believe that, if everyone continues to believe that, these people will never have the opportunity to demonstrate their value.

I believe that most people are looking for a way to apply their skills and to work their way toward a better life. Unfortunately, because of their looks, their current situation, or their past, many people will never have the opportunity to realize their potential and will never know the surge of confidence and pride that comes from having someone vouch for you. But, if you choose to look at each person as a contributor with a lifetime of knowledge and skills, it can be a game changer.

Regardless of the outside, I believe that each person has a set of power tools that they can use to build a better life. Sometimes they just need the right opportunity and someone who believes.

Dad, thanks for teaching this girl to use power tools and to believe in the power of others.

After months of thinking about it, I’ve finally taken the leap and started this blog about my journey as a volunteer. My hope is that you will find motivation on your own path toward volunteering in a way that’s meaningful for you.