Volunteer Program Vision

Education goes far beyond the classroom, our kids and community are getting educated everywhere by everything and we never know when they might learn something that sticks with them the rest of their lives. This is why it is so important that we take care of not just our home life but also the communities our kids are a part of. When I noticed the lack of volunteer opportunities being offered (after asking around I only heard of the fire department), I saw huge potential to help this community. My vision with starting this volunteer organization is not only to help and empower citizens to start their own projects for causes they believe in, but also to mobilize the community to be great examples for our kids and to help each other out. Volunteering also has countless benefits just to list some: it can help build self-esteem, helps with creativity, helps build social skills, leadership skills, persuasion, and entrepreneurship skills as well. It’s also been proven to extend people’s lives and increase overall happiness when someone volunteers for 10 hours per week. With that in mind I’ve been enquiring with a few businesses in town and asked if volunteers were to complete 10 hours per week if for that week they could get a free gym session or juice or discount and so far I’ve gotten great responses! I see so much potential for this community to come together and build itself up. There’s so many people just looking to help but don’t know where to start. There’s also some that seem to have all of these ideas but just don’t know how to even go about getting them started. My main vision for this is to help bring those ideas to life, teaching each person how to run their own entrepreneurial venture while giving back to the community. With just the option to have something to do and to feel a part of a community I’m hoping it will keep some kids from joining gangs or from participating in less desirable or opportunistic activities. This will also help them learn responsibility and management skills as well as persuasion since they will have a pool of volunteers available but not guaranteed (like Google does with it’s engineers when they have a project idea!). I’m hoping to also teach others to dream big and accomplish big goals, also to turn to books and the internet to learn from others that have done it before and to not be afraid to look for a mentor to help them reach their goals faster. Most people that made it to where others want to be most likely had someone help them get there and there’s nothing that would make them happier than to ‘pay it forward.’ Also want this to be a well connected and thriving volunteer community where we all learn from each other's wins and our failures as well as help each other where we can through knowledge, labor, connections, materials, etc. This program will not only help serve as a skill building opportunity but will also hopefully lead to partnerships and more entrepreneurs and more jobs in the community. Every project that we take on, will also be fully documented for other non-profits or organizations to learn from and replicate projects from. We’re all in this big beautiful world together :) hopefully we will be able to help not just a lot of people, but also animals and the environment through these efforts!