volunteer

Organization Positivity

- Adam Clare

Dr. Beth Cabrera is all about making the workplace a more positive space for people and lucky for us she has a blog informing people on positive changes they can make!

Here’s a more recent post on how volunteering helps organizations, companies, and individuals:

In addition to lifting employees up, volunteering can also help them to develop new skills that can be transferred to their jobs. Volunteers build leadership capabilities, hone their communication skills, and learn to work with people from a wide range of backgrounds. Another benefit is that employees who volunteer together develop closer relationships. This is especially valuable when employees from different organizational levels or departments have the opportunity to work together. So it isn’t surprising that a recent study in Germany found that employees who volunteer not only are more satisfied, but they perform better at work.

Volunteering can be equally beneficial for college students. I graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee not too long ago. I was proud to see that Rhodes topped Newsweeks’ 2010 list of “Most service-minded schools”. Rhodes has always had a strong commitment to service. The Kinney Program, based on volunteerism, leadership and civic engagement, was established in the 1950’s and Rhodes has the oldest collegiate chapter of Habitat for Humanity in the country. The newer Bonner Scholars Program focuses on service-learning, social change and servant leadership. The positive emotions that Rhodes students experience through volunteering provide benefits that help them to excel in school. Volunteering also teaches them skills that will help them to be successful after they graduate.

Read the rest of this post.

A Well of Change

- Adam Clare

Well of Change is a website that encourages people to give more than money to organizations that need help. Their visions is to” create widespread systematic change that will revolutionize how people support the not-for-profit organizations they care about.” The site is run entirely by volunteers and they recently held an event at MaRS in Toronto.

“Who wants to learn yoga?” “I’ve got Indian cooking over here!” “Can you teach my kid how to play drums?” People ring out with their requests at this “Skills Drive” organized by social enterprise and MaRS client, Well of Change.

Well of Change is devoted to raising money not by tapping into people’s wallets, but by exploiting their skills and hobbies. At the beginning of the evening, participants network and brainstorm all the skills they have, whether borne of professional training or basement tinkering.

They then put a dollar value on their skills and participants bid on them: $40 for pilates lessons, $90 for a good carpet cleaning. The lesson takes place and the money goes straight to a charity of your choice. As a buyer, you’re paying for a service and as a skills provider you’re donating with your time instead of your money.

Read the rest of the article here.

Urban Farming the USA is Growing in Popularity

- Adam Clare

People in urban centres in the USA are turning vacant lots into places for communities to grow in nearly every sense of the word.

Alemany Farm is on the forefront of a renewed interest in urban farming nationwide, from Michelle Obama’s garden on the South Lawn of the White House to the proliferation of backyard chicken coops in New York City.

“I do think there is something like a movement afoot,” said Mark, 34, who chronicles environmental trends in the Earth Island Journal and can rattle off the names of urban farms from Milwaukee to Philadelphia.

In the grittiest, grimiest, most unlikely neighborhoods, in cities that include Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore and Miami, volunteer farmers are growing food that provides not only for those who work the gardens, but also for neighbors, food kitchens and school lunchrooms.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says there are thousands of community gardens throughout the country, though no one keeps an exact tally. Localharvest.org, a Web site about community gardens, lists more than 2,500 in its database.

In 2008, 557 new gardens signed up with LocalHarvest, according to the site. In the first two months of 2009, 300 more joined.

UN’s Declaration of Human Rights in 21 Languages

- Adam Clare

Oct. 24th is United Nations Day, and to celebrate LibriVox collected the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 21 Languages. You can download audio files of LibriVox volunteers reading the declaration at LibriVox.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. It defines the fundamental rights of individuals, and exhorts all governments to protect these rights. The UN has translated the document into over three hundred languages and dialects. This audiobook includes readings in 21 languages, by LibriVox volunteers.”

The United Nations wants people around the world to remember that we are all humans and that we should all get along. Today many schools will celebrate the diversity of human culture.

In Costa Rica, UN day is a holiday, awesome!

Dating Volunteers

- Adam Clare

hand and heartEd Igoe writes in to tell us about a way to help people while helping yourself (if your single):

There are, scattered around The United States, a group of organizations who have found a win-win-win situation. They are the Single Volunteers.

These groups act as a loose liason between single (as in unmarried) adults and organizations in need of volunteers to run events like charity walks, public television fund drives, and community events. They have no operating budget, no elected officers, and no offices. Volunteers pay nothing to join or participate. Their administration exist strictly in cyberspace. Volunteers check a web page (edited by a volunteer) and send e-mail to a (volunteer) team leader to sign up for events.

Win #1: The single adults get to work alongside other single adults.

Win #2: Events get staffed with free helpers.

Win #3: Charities benefit from the free help and events.

This is definitely one area where the news is good. People working for others. The web page I list above is just one of the “SV” (Single Volunteers) groups, this on being based in the Baltimore/Annapolis area of Maryland.

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