Volunteering As A Family In 5 Easy Steps
By Hope Sykes RVers have quickly discovered how enriching thelifestyle can be in a homeschooling experience. New places, new sounds, new experiences can make an unrivaled learning environment for your kids. What if you want to develop the social skill of volunteering? Can you do it as an RVer and how do you go about it?
Can you volunteer as an RVer? Sure. RVers can be actually highly sought after since they can go to where help may be needed most since housing needs are already taken care of. With downsizing and the smaller staffs of some non-profits, the concept of a volunteering family is not only welcomed, but encouraged.
How do I get started? There are basically five steps that you will go through when you volunteer as a family:
Step 1: Develop an awareness of what problems or issues that you would like to involve your family's efforts in. To be most effective, you'll need to find out what issues your family is passionate about. Did a newspaper story catch someone's attention? Did you spot a homeless person during your travels? Did you see litter scattered about in an otherwise beautiful state park?
Step 2: Try to develop a set of questions to help tackle the project. Examples would be:
Where would we like to volunteer?
- How much time do we want to devote to the project? A day? A few hours? A week? Longer?
- What skills do we each have that would work for this situation?
Don't forget the younger members of your family. Even young children can pick up litter, sort by color, or pass out information.
- In addition to giving of our time and talents, what would we like to learn from this experience?
Step 3: Once you've identified a subject and area where you would like to volunteer, research the topic so that you will be better informed and so that you can educate others. Examples could include the number of homeless in America or to discover how much food is wasted in the U.S. per year.
Identifying the problem can help you research the topic more easily through the Internet or will assist a librarian in your search. Don't forget to check area phone books under "Social Service Organizations" to see if an organization already exists in your area where you can get both information and offer assistance.
Now's a good time to see how you can integrate these activities into homeschooling lessons or even resumes. If you or some of your family members want some college credit on the road, check with an area university and see if some of you can receive credit for your activities.
Step 4: Put your family's ideas and planning into action.
When you contact the volunteer agency, make sure that all ages will be accepted. Don't forget to ask what arrangements are possible since you will be arriving by RV. Will you be allowed to park on site? Will hook-ups be provided at no charge? Will pets be allowed?
Try to arrange your schedules so that parents can trade off volunteer work and other activities if very young children are involved. Children often aren't interested in intense volunteer activity for the entire day so break up the time by other enjoyable activities. Make sure that you have planned your activities so that the entire family can "end on a happy note" rather than feeling rushed, cranky, or exhausted.
Step 5: Make sure that you decide how you want to record your efforts. Picture taking and journal writing can be fun and educational. Web sites can be set up for free and allow others to follow your progress.
Documentation is also a great way to discover how much positive effect that you've made. How many homeless did you feed in one day? How many aluminum cans equal one pound?
If the activity was really fun and productive, recording your efforts will then give you a template for what to look for in another volunteer adventure.
- What did you like best about the experience? - What made it so successful or rewarding? - How could the experience be improved? - Who at the facility made such an impact?
If you have young children or are young-at-heart, I can highly recommend two books to get you started:
- The Lady in the Box by Ann McGovern - Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen written and illustrated by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan
Both books are richly illustrated and offer a great introduction to the topics of homelessness and volunteering to make the world a better place.
Copyright ©2000, 2001. Hope Sykes and The RVing Volunteer.
