Plymouth - Volunteers are agents of change. They
might be one of the essential ingredients in the recipe for
change – such as salt in an egg dish. Or they might be the
catalyst for change – the one ingredient that makes all the
others turn into a completely new one as in a chemistry
formula.
If that sounds like an
awesome responsibility, it is. Yet most new volunteers I
have interviewed tell me they want to volunteer to “make a
difference.” That’s making a change. Here are a few “ABCs”
or fundamentals for creating change that will help you
identify your role in the formula where you serve as
volunteer. See which ones you recognize as an influence you
have provided.
“A” is for Attitude. The attitude you bring to a volunteer
assignment and the attitudes you alter by serving as a
volunteer. Know how delighted you are when a store clerk is
genuinely interested in helping you find just what you want?
It brightens your day! So it is with anyone who relates
with a cheerful and helpful volunteer. Let me share a very
personal example. For a number of years I was the chaperone
for four institutionalized women for their monthly shopping
trip. None had relatives – or relatives near enough to them
– to take them out. As the months stretched into years, I
discovered that
I
was the one who discovered helping them find what they
wanted at the store and enjoying their delight had the same
result. No matter how harried I might have been at the start
of our trip, I always felt renewed and joyful by the end of
it.
“B” is for Behavior. The act of volunteering often changes
what you are doing at the time of your service. A volunteer
at the front desk of a hospital or reading as a Practice
Partner with a second grader in school would undoubtedly
have been doing something else had they not been at their
volunteer site – shopping, working in the home or garden, or
any number of other possibilities. But the volunteer is also
changing the behavior of the
client;
helping a lost visitor find their hospital patient
faster
or giving the young student the opportunity of
practicing
their reading skills one-on-one with an attentive adult.
“C” is for Condition. The condition that Reading Volunteer
may be influencing is illiteracy. Not for the entire nation,
but for each and every child they help. As each works
one-on-one they change the Situation − the “S” or plural
form of ABCs.
Where are you in the Volunteer’s alphabet? |
