Volunteering is the theme of this month’s Yahoo! Mother Board (yes, I’ve joined something else!) and I have to chuckle as I read the posts of the other bloggers because some of them talk about super-volunteers and some talk about slacker moms and I can say that I fall squarely into both categories, depending on which segment of my “world” you talk to.
As previously posted, I am the incoming President of the local Junior League. I commit many, many hours to this organization and part of their mission is to promote voluntarism (small nit, you can say voluntarism or volunteerism, there is a very minor difference not worth quibbling over in this post). I serve on another community board and serve my community in other ways. However, there are other groups which ask for my volunteer time and which I used to be more involved in and which I don’t. Yes, part of it is a matter of time — a girl can only be in so many places at once. But part of it has to do with volunteer appreciation.
I’m not talking about luncheons or awards or certificates or anything like that. In fact, I personally don’t like those things much, though I know some people find those types of recognition extremely gratifying. I’m talking about actually appreciating the skills and time I have to give. A particular organization I used to give not a lot of time to, but at least some, simply failed to see any value in my organizational, technical or communication skills. My tendency to turn to the Web to solve problems was apparently against their organizational culture. From time to time they’d throw me a bone and let me do a computer-related task, but mostly they did not want to learn anything new and they didn’t want me to ever suggest anything new. My skills and experience were of no interest to them, they wanted to do things the same way they’d always done it and I either needed to get with the program or get out. When I made one last suggestion to try to solve a problem and was greeted with, “Not everyone is like you and wants to use the Web,” I realized what my answer was. It was time for me to get out. Get out of the way. I’m the “slacker mom” because I don’t volunteer there any more, but I don’t volunteer because I don’t find it enjoyable. Every time I try to just show up and do shift work (vowing to “shut up and show up”), I’m reminded just how much of an outcast I am in that organization and I come home wishing I had spent my time elsewhere. Life is too short to feel miserable during your volunteer time.
Contrast that to my volunteer experiences with Junior League or my involvement with Leadership Fairfax or my other Board work, where my skills and experience are not only welcomed, but the organizations are always asking for more of it. I walk away from these experiences feeling recharged, energized, and willing to do just about anything they want me to do. I have done everything from shift work to long-range strategic planning – even in the same day – and I always walk away feeling exuberant. Naturally the mission or cause is the primary reason for volunteering, but knowing that you are valued as a volunteer keeps you coming back.
When I go to my children’s schools, I go there because of them. But I appreciate how the teachers’ faces light up and they say “thank you!” Cutting construction paper flowers is not my life’s purpose, but if it makes my son’s teacher’s life a little bit easier, then that’s a good use of my time. The fact that she seems so grateful makes me all that much more willing to do it. Not once has my help been turned down or turned away nor have I been shamed for not having more time to give. They are willing to take me as I am and take what I can provide.
I’ve just finished a half day of training the League’s incoming leadership about being inspiring leaders. If there is one thing they’ve taken away from today’s training, I hope it is that part of being a good leader is remembering how to treat your volunteers. If you are in the role of recruiting or managing volunteers and find yourself surrounded by “slackers” you may want to ask yourself what kind of message you’ve been sending. Did I use to be your volunteer? Your “slackers” may be someone else’s star volunteers — see if you can keep them from running out the door!
Check out Volunteer Fairfax’s Volunteer Bootcamp – a great training program for managers of volunteers! I have no affiliation with them, I just think it’s chock full of great info!
There are moments in life when you realize, “Wow, this is it, this is what I’ve always wanted! It’s really happening!” Those moments can become a swirling mixture of emotions: elation, fear, relief, sadness, a sense of time running out and at the same time a sense of time standing still.
Last night was one of those moments for me.
I received the official gavel and historic copy of Robert’s Rules of Order as the incoming President of the Junior League of Northern Virginia, a goal I set in recent years, but has its foundation in my mother’s two terms as President of the Miami Ballet Society in my girlhood. Watching my mother and her friends working hard to put together galas and fundraisers to bring wonderful ballets to our city, I knew that one day I wanted to do something similar. Decades later I’m in a different city and working with a different organization for a different cause, but I’m thrilled nonetheless to serve with an equally dedicated group of women. It is a dream come true.
This, however, was not my first, nor my only dream. I lived out my first dream in my first career, as a television journalist. Although when I first embarked on the career, I had planned on going all the way to the networks, I ended up changing career tracks — dazzled by an opportunity that came my way literally on the same day as a job offer from a Salinas TV station — and took a wild ride on the Silicon Valley wave instead.
So somehow it seemed quite fitting that the chosen Woman of Vision and guest speaker on the night that I reached my “mid-life dream” of becoming President of the Junior League would be Washington DC’s NBC News4′s Barbara Harrison. A 30+-years news veteran who has used her local fame to raise awareness about important women’s and children’s issues such as prenatal care and permanent homes for foster children. We’ve reached out to her a few times for a few different events, and though she has always graciously wanted to be there, her schedule has not allowed her to. And yet, miraculously, somehow this worked out. Even though it conflicted with the White House Correspondent’s Dinner — our invitation came in first! (Tell me something greater was not at work here!)
So there I was, on an evening where I was beginning to launch into one of my big (mid-life) goals, sitting next to a woman who was the very embodiement of one of my previous (young-life) goals. A goal achieved, yes, for indeed I did become a reporter and anchor, but a goal I ultimately traded in for different goals — the excitement of something completely different, seeing what this “Web stuff” was going to be all about, and later, choosing to be a stay-at-home mother.
In our brief time together before the official part of the evening began, we discussed what the League does and the role of community service. This drifted into an exchange where Barbara explained that she would’ve love to have been part of an organization like the Junior League, but her work schedule doesn’t allow it, and I explained that I understood completely what that was like having been there myself once, and that those of us in organizations like the League appreciate people in the media who help elevate the issues. Which led to my offhand remark about having left journalism for Silicon Valley and her saying something of the effect, “Oh my, I think more of us wished we had had the opportunity to do that!” And though she probably didn’t realize it, in one fell swoop, she made me remember once again, just how lucky I was. For as we discussed the consolidating world of journalism and the downward pressure on salaries and the impact of new technologies on journalism and how that is currently impacting so many people in the field, I realized that even if I had stayed in television journalism, the dream I had as a sixteen-year-old would’ve looked very different in today’s reality.
Yes, there were so many wonderful, swirling emotions last night. The honor I felt in being allowed to serve an organization I love so much in this capacity. The pride I felt as my husband took the honorary “First Husband’s Frying Pan” (since he’ll probably be cooking a lot of meals on his own) in a good-natured show of support. The flash of panic, “Am I really ready for this?” And then the calm peace that comes when a dream is realized, and you know that you should enjoy this moment and drink it all in, for soon it won’t be long until it is time to aspire to yet a bigger one.
They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They? was the title of a 1989 episode of a TV show called Designing Women. In the episode the character played by Delta Burke, Suzanne Sugarbaker, always proud of her beauty queen looks, realized that she was now seen as “the fat girl” by her friends at a high school reunion. She was awarded the “Most Changed” trophy at her fifteen year reunion, as a snark at her physical appearance, and she accepted the award with a lovely speech letting everyone know that she was going to take it as a testimony of how she has changed from shallow beauty to a woman of intellectual and emotional substance rather than the hurtful comment on her weight gain it was originally intended.
I remember reading an article about this particular episode a long time ago, because the episode was written specifically to address Burke’s real-life weight gain. She was a gorgeous, sexy slender woman when hired, and her weight gain became a problem on set between Burke and the show’s producers/writers. Burke’s weight gain was due to a combination of physical and psychological issues and the more she felt pressured about it, the worse it got. Since then, her weight has see-sawed and she has launched a line of plus-sized clothing. At some point she shifted from running from her weight to trying to help others who were heavy feel better about it.
I’m outing myself as a fat woman. I have been terrified of old friends seeing photos of me online in the shape I am in currently and I have decided to end the terror now.
Today I’m pleased to have my first guest blogger, Louis Yuhasz, founder of Louie’s Kids. I met Louis only a week ago when he spoke at the Junior League Mid-Atlantic Conference and his speech about watching his morbidly obese father’s decline after having a stroke, and then how he and his organization work with kids and their families today to change not only the numbers on the scale, but their attitudes toward food, toward exercises, and toward themselves through nutritional counseling, exercise programs, mental counseling and mentoring, was inspiring and life-changing. He’s a man on a mission and you can’t help but get swept away when you listen to him. Today, DC Metro Moms is having a special “Topic Tuesday” about Children of the Recession, and you will find my own post listed there. I’ve asked Louis to write about his organization and about the challenges the kids he work with face during the recession.
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Running a non-profit organization that works with kids struggling with obesity is certainly not easy, but there are many instances when it comes with rewards.
After not allowing myself, a former television reporter, to watch the news for weeks because I found the doom and gloom about the economy too stressful, I watched several CBS news clips from the Children of the Recession series online, and when I watched as an emergency room pediatric nurse practitioner showed the x-rays clearly depicting the multiple injuries of a young child — TWO broken arms, TWO fractured legs, I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. And neither could the reporter on the story.
Good Stuff Eatery is the name of the restaurant Chef Spike Mendelsohn, of Bravo’s reality show Top Chef, launched in Washington DC last year, and it was the setting of the realization of my own good “stuff” — I have been invited to be a part of the DC Metro Moms Blog. (More on that in a minute…)
Volunteering is the theme of this month’s Yahoo! Mother Board (yes, I’ve joined something else!) and I have to chuckle as I read the posts of the other bloggers because some of them talk about super-volunteers and some talk about slacker moms and I can say that I fall squarely into both categories, depending on which segment of my “world” you talk to.
