volunteer work in Seattle:
My personal philosophy about
volunteerism.
I am currently volunteering as a "family partner" with
Habitat for Humanity,
an organization dedicated to lifting people out of poverty by
enabling them to own their homes. The Seattle group just celebrated
its 15th Anniversary with a block party at
New Holly, a nice neighborhood
just off Beacon Hill.
A family partner acts as a contact between Habitat and the family
that will be buying a home from the organization. There are quite
a few requirements of the families. They need to contribute
a significant number of hours working at the home construction
site, gaining sweat equity. The families are buying the
homes, so they will need to be prepared to pay a mortgage and
to plan for ongoing maintenance of their homes, and there are
a number of workshops that they must attend. The family partner
helps to keep information going between the Habitat office and
the families.
I've only been doing this a few months, and my "family" was
about halfway through the process when I started (their
previous partner was transferred out of town). It's not a
tremendous amount of work, and I think that consistency is
really the key. My family should be moving into their home
in September.
Seattle Works is a great starting
place for becoming more involved in community service. Some folks
from my office joined the Team Works program. Teams of about a
dozen people sign on for 5 activities, one Saturday per month. The
activites we did included landscaping in the parks, sorting
donations at the
Good Will store and the
West Seattle Food Bank, even helping at a charity auction.
The organizations that we helped serve a lot more people
than you might think.
A soccer friend and I checked out
Project Impact
, which does earthquake retrofits for low-income homes (the
retrofitting can cost anywhere from $3000 upwards). We completed
the training class, but I think the organization is having a hard
time reaching critical mass to get started on the work.
A couple other organizations I support are
Fun at the party following 2001 Seattle Works Day
Other volunteer opportunities
My personal philosophy is that
we all have dramatic differences in our abilities and
that some people are very needy of help, regardless of their
"worthiness" or our comprehension of their struggles. We all,
like children, try as hard as we can and still fail in some
areas of our lives. We all need help and compassion for those
failures. I will
never be able to understand what it is like to have grown up
without the advantages I have had - married, responsible and
supportive parents and grandparents, good health and education,
and, yes, being a white, middle-class American.
I also believe that, though we can survive largely without having much interaction, we should preserve a sense of community through caring for one another. This caring cannot be legislated, but has to be done through personal choice and preferably through actual involvement. So, I encourage you to pick a group that fits your concerns or your interests, get out there and give something back!
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Enjoy your stay!
[email protected]
2/18/01