How You Can Help

Volunteer at Operation Care

Why Volunteer?

Why Volunteer?

An Open Letter to our Community:

You have an unprecedented opportunity to help your community grow into the one you dream about, the one where you would like to live. In Amador County, there are a number of ways to get personally involved in real change through volunteer work. Whether you have lots of time to devote or a little, whether you have specialized skills or are just getting started, whether you want to contribute to improving the environment or to bettering the lives for our community’s children and parents --there is a place for you, where you can make a difference.

Wherever you wish to make your mark, you must first decide what you want to do as a volunteer, and then discover how to find and secure the volunteer job you want.

First, give some thought to what you enjoy, what rewards you want, what keeps you focused, what entertains you. Volunteering can and should be fun as well as hard work! In fact, volunteering is a great opportunity for you to add balance to your life, so you may want to choose activities that are completely unlike your usual occupation. For example, if you have a very cerebral paid job, it may work very well for you to pick a very hands-on-get-good-and-dirty volunteer job. If you often work in isolation, you may want to find a volunteer opportunity where you work in a team.

Second, think about your personal values. What stirs your heart? What important paths do you see for your community? The words that come to you may be fairly concrete, like “food for the hungry,” or may be abstract like “justice.”

To help focus on what your deepest concerns are, think about situations you’ve witnessed, in real life on your city streets or in the news, or in artistic representation, whether in the movies or even in a TV commercial. Do you see a story on the news about people losing everything in an apartment fire and feel your heart respond? Do you see a movie where people in a decaying neighborhood mobilize and work together to revive it and find yourself saying, “Yes!”?

Finally, put your favorite activities together with your important issues. This is a great chance to be creative. Juggle ideas around; mix and match them; ask friends to help you think. You may come up with some bizarre combinations, but I promise you two things: you will come up with several things you can do, and some of the seemingly bizarre volunteer jobs are out there!

A final, vital component of deciding what volunteer job is right for you is your own personality and how it might fit into a volunteer position and an organization. Dig deep and identify what makes you feel rewarded, successful, and effective. If it’s accomplishment you seek, and seeing the results of a job well done, then look for a position where your achievements will be visible. Stay away from jobs with intangible results. If it’s praise you want, then be sure the organization you’re considering recognizes the value of their volunteers in some overt way, that you have frequent contact with appreciative people and they are not strangers to the words, “Thank you!” Talk to the volunteer coordinator about your concerns, or talk to current volunteers. If it’s affiliation and belonging that moves you, look for and organization whose public reputation reflects your own values and where you can work with others in a close team with shared values. Finally, if you thrive on having influence over others, avoid being a cog in a wheel. Look for a place where you can craft a role as a leader-you may be surprised at how many opportunities you will find.

One last piece of advice: don’t let delays or false starts deter or discourage you. Be a good consumer, be persistent, advocate for yourself. A volunteer position where you don’t feel effective isn’t helping anyone.

Now get to it and let’s see what we can do for Amador County! Click here to download a PDF volunteer application for Operation Care.

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Click here to download
a Volunteer Application
and come help us at
Operation Care!

Note: the free Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view our Newsletters. If you don't have it, you can get it here.

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Operation Care
(209) 223-2897
621 New York Ranch Road, Jackson CA 95642