Volunteering as a team!

How long would it take you to paint a room by yourself? It's the type of work that always goes smoother with a partner or a team.

So when a recreation room needed to be repainted in one of our senior homes I immediately thought it would be a nice project for a team.

Now to let you in on a little volunteer coordinator secret, there are two ways that we might get a team of volunteers. One way is to find a group of people who already volunteer together through a community they are in, such as a school, temple, or place of employment. However, another way to get a team of volunteers is also to recruit individuals for a project.


There's something very magical about watching individuals come together as a team. For the painting project we completed our volunteers all came from different backgrounds. Some were high school students, others were working adults, and other were graduate school and college students. It's a group of people who might usually not realize they have something in common--they have an age difference, the come from different parts of the city--but they all came together here in order to give back and help out!


If you're thinking about volunteering, remember, the impact you make won't just be on the clients you serve--you'll also get to meet some interesting people and maybe learn something from each other as well. I often notice older volunteers taking younger volunteers under their wing and giving them advice on how to complete a task, and even beyond that. Some volunteers have given each other career or school advice, other volunteers have met a great friend, there's no telling what might happen and it makes my job all the more interesting as the person who brings volunteers together!