Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Do any of you volunteer?

There is a HUGE difference between a volunteer that shows up to do their MUCH NEEDED and GREATLY APPRECIATED few hours of scheduled work at an event and a volunteer that does it on a full time basis.

I do it on a full time.
More or less.

I volunteer time (aka: blood, sweat, tears and a whole lot of headaches) to Island 22 Horse Park. I have been a part of this part for as long as the park has existed – a little over 20 years – but I only started volunteering for the committee a few years before I left for Japan. Well in Japan I created the website and helped write some letters.

Not even a week back in Canada and I was at my first Island 22 meeting and sectioning my time towards the stadium aspect of it all. I have now put my name on the list of people who work on begging for money and I am the meeting secretary. Not that I don’t have enough to do with my time.

Last night we had a meeting but Li was working so ToddlerJi had to come. She was a wonderful kid (of course) and enjoyed some time with her grandfather, who is also a member of the group. Island 22 has been an all family consuming park for EVER. So it seems. Last nights meeting didn’t end till almost 9:30. Somehow ToddlerJi remained sweet – don’t know how but I am not going to question it. Then I was up till past eleven writing out the minutes of the meeting and emailing them out to everyone. I am one of those people where if it isn’t done immediately forgetaboutit cause I am going to forget everything that was said.

I don’t even own a horse or even bloody ride any more and yet I am still out there. Hell almost all of the people in our group don’t even ride, and about half don’t own a horse. We work so hard for this park and the sport, so it can send me over the brink of frustration and screaming when we are bumping heads with twits that wish to destroy and take away all our hard work. We created and maintain that place!! They give us NOTHING in return for using it. AUGH!

I could rant for hours about this but I will simplify it to “dog walkers” and leave it at that.

Then there is my desire to rant about fund raising. I hate doing it. I almost find myself feeling I am crossing the lines of rudeness when I ask for money or product for hard working business owners. The problem is that we need the stuff. The same goes for searching desperately for our much needed casual volunteers. These people are worth their weight in gold during an event, but finding them and letting them understand how much we appreciate them when we are so overworked is hard.

I am a sponge for any ideas on how to beg for money and volunteers, so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.

What do the rest of you all do?
Who do you volunteer for – either casually or full time?
There are so many cool and interesting groups out there that I am not even aware of. My friend at work is a curler, so she volunteers for anything curling. It is neat listening to her stories.

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::2/27/2007 :: 8 Comments:

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