Please Give A Crap And Volunteer!

I like my new job. My days are spent recruiting, training, and managing hospice volunteers for Odyssey Healthcare. Not only is it a good job that provides me with desperate freedom and flexibility but I feel good about what I do. Not only does the work of volunteers brighten out patients' days but the volunteers feel good about it as well. My days are spent helping others help those that are dying. Can't go wrong with that. This got me thinking about volunteer work in general and has made me realize there is so much more we could do.


Heidi and I have been fortunate to do volunteer work. Heidi gave four months of her life to an orphanage in Ecuador and while living in Vegas I was able to do some volunteer work for the homeless.


Together we returned to the Ecuadorian orphanages and we gave a couple hours a week two times a month to a Weimaraner dog rescue. I was hoping to volunteer for the American Cancer Society by driving patients to and from chemotherapy but by time they got back to me I was too deep in grad school...sorry, that is just a lame excuse.

But what about mandatory volunteer work? Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama recently said he would be interested in instituting mandatory community service including 50 hours a year for high school students and 100 hours a year for college students. I have a friend from Sweden who explained to me that when most West European men and women finish high school they have a choice, they can give two years to the military or two years in civil service by working for the postal service, nursing facilities, state run hospitals, or other such fields. My friend chose to work for Sweden's national parks service.


That makes sense, why don't we implement something similar? Volunteer work has slipped the past few years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year volunteer work went down 0.5% and the year before that it went down 2.1%. Something tells me this year with a cruddy economy, awful housing market, and outrageous gas prices volunteer work will continue to slide. Last year 60.8 million Americans volunteered for at least one organization, were you one of those 60.8 and what is it going to take for more people to start participating in their communities?

Now that I am on the other side of the fence I encourage everyone to volunteer. DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING! Trust me there is no excuse, in my agency alone we have volunteers helping out from home 1-2 hours a month yet they are still making a difference. Please, I beg of you (mostly because I now know how frustrating it can be for a volunteer manager like myself) find an agency you think you would enjoy and start right away and be one of the 20% if Americans that care enough to help out.


There is so much one can do. Last year Bill Clinton published "Giving." It is a great book and an easy read that gives so many suggestions and ways one can give back to the community. He provides a very dense list of various charitable organizations and one can easily find something to do. Check it out, it is optimistic and heartening to read about so many organizations and individuals that have made a difference.


Let me finish by giving another suggestion and making a pitch for one of my favorite on-line volunteer organizations. VolunteerMatch.org has helped me locate more than two dozen volunteers and that was using only 1 zip code! It's a good start, check it out and begin volunteering. As for Heidi and I in addition to the hospice work we are both doing I think we will start volunteering at a wild animal rescue. Good times. No regrets people, because something tells me this stuff will come up when we find ourselves at the pearly gates. Please tell me where you have volunteered, how you were recruited, and what went well and what went bad. I need all the suggestions I can get!

P.S. In case you're wondering, I think we should reinstate a draft that offers military or other community service, it's about time we ALL gave back to our country.