| Jenny's AmeriCorps/Nonprofit Blog |
| Monday, June 7, 2004 I had a wonderful weekend with my friend Rebecca (Hi, Rebes!) in Boston and on-site and at the Grecian Festival (traditional Greek dances are hard). My third time on the Freedom Trail in Boston, and I finally made it from start to finish. Congratulations, me! Saturday was especially productive: the roof is finished, the staging is down, most of the windows are installed--as are the exterior doors--and John MacDougall (super volunteer extraordinaire) did an incredible job on the front entry way (with help from St. Luke's Church). The weather was great, and the lunch brought by the Girl Scouts was ever so tasty! Today I had a meeting with Debbie at Assumption College. Hopefully we can get some students out in the fall. I think they make good participants in the Cans for Habitat program come this fall. I wish we had the capacity to have larger numbers of volunteers out on site. Bummer. We're just so darned popular volunteer-wise. If only we had the resources to back it up. Ah well. It's such a lovely day outside that I can hardly even bother with "what ifs." And anyway, I'm all exited because good friend Kelly--currently teaching in Japan--has asked me to be a bridesmaid. Although I currently have no idea where the monetary resources will come for this, I couldn't say no! I never thought of myself as someone who got excited about such things, but Laura's wedding was fun, and I know Kelly's will be to. Wahoo! |
| Here it is: the continuing saga of my experience as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in Worcester, Massachusetts. I would love to hear from any other AmeriCorps volunteers or nonprofit employees--especially volunteer coordinators. Email me--tell me what you think, or share your own experiences. Together we'll survive this crazy nonprofit world! |
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| Thursday, June 10, 2004 Surprisingly, it's been a rather slow week. And certainly the heat did not help anything! I have no air conditioning at home or at work--and certainly not on the job site! But already it's cooling off thanks to a fantastic thunderstorm last night. I attended my first Faith Partnership committee meeting in months--they always conflicted with play rehersal before. Although attendence was very low (less than half of the committee), it was a good meeting. There are all sorts of initiatives being worked on--a church down in southern Massachusetts is all set to sponsor at least half a house. We just need to find land! The Shrewsbury Housing Authority is considering a partnership with us (details are still unsurprisingly fuzzy). Hopefully this means they have some land they'd consider having us build on. I finished up my Cans for Habitat display board. I'm all excited to get congregations recycling cans (and other Habitat friends too), but I'm not sure how to instigate it. Do I wait for mission committees to contact me, looking for ways to support Habitat? Or should I be more proactive about the whole thing? And if so, how? Right now I'm supposed to be writing a letter to our Faith Partners giving them an update on Paine Street. Only, I don't know what to say exactly. Last year's update letter (about Grove St.) mentions ways to help--and of course volunteering is the number one thing that congregations want to do. Only, we don't need volunteers right now! Not onsite, anyway. So how do you say, we want your prayers and money but no hammers, please? Kind of a delicate and difficult place for me to be in. I'm the volunteer coordinator, but I have no more space to coordinate! I just have a waiting list. I mean, I realize that I'm in a good place, that there are plenty of organizations who would kill to have too many voolunteers. But I'm afraid that these congregations will get discouraged and wander off to support some other nonprofit. And giving them opportunities to do hands-on work is the best way to rally for monetary donations. Hmmm.... |