Looking around our Central Oregon communities, we see numbers of people involved in doing good for others. Here and worldwide, we face dismaying problems, but everywhere there are people seeking and finding solutions -- volunteers, community activists, social and environmental entrepreneurs, nonprofit and public leaders -- a host of us working for the good of all. This is what gives me hope.
Volunteering in college with an after-school program led me into my first career, teaching in schools, everywhere from Boston to Addis Ababa. From this beginning, I got involved in higher education, coordinating service-learning and student volunteering programs in Seattle and Portland. Then to Bend, where I founded and led Volunteer Insights, which became Volunteer Connect and now lives on in a new home, as Volunteer Central Oregon. I believe that inviting others to volunteer and lead community change is crucial for sustaining and improving our community and our world. I've experienced the joy and pain, the successes and failures, in volunteering, teaching, community action, and nonprofit leadership. And I've kept up hope. All along, I've figured things out and kept moving ahead with the help of guiding hands, hearts, and minds. I want to give this kind of help to others.
0 Comments
|
|