Local Service Weekend letter

On Saturday April 23-25, 2010 BonaResponds will be holding a local service weekend. We will have volunteers working at multiple sites across the area. We generally get about 100+ volunteers that come out, break into teams and go out and volunteer in the community at various sites.

The volunteers will meet at 10:00 AM at the Murphy Auditorium on the west side of the St. Bonaventure Campus. From there we will break into smaller work groups that will spread out across the region where they will do everything from picking up trash, to making trails, to painting, to landscaping, and putting up drywall.

Many of the volunteers have experience from weeks in the Gulf Coast, in Gowanda, and in Atlanta after floods etc. However to some volunteers this will be their first experience with volunteering. While we believe that serving others can be an important contributor to their personal growth and happiness, it only happens if the volunteers get involved, so we do want to make it a good experience for all involved.

We are writing to ask two things:

1. Would people from your group would like to be involved as volunteers? These local events work SO MUCH better when our volunteers work side by side with people from “town”. It means more to them, they can share stories, and more work gets done. So we’d love to have volunteers from your organization. Everyone can do something. From driving, to taking pictures, to serving food, to even explaining why it is important work etc.
2. If your organization needs any help. While due to an uncertain number of volunteers (most just sign up the day of the event) and weather, we can not guarantee we will be able to help, in the VAST majority of cases we have been able to accomplish what has been asked. We would like it to be a “special” need. For instance, we are not really designed to do regular cleaning etc, but if you have a special project that will allow your organization to better serve the local community (paint, remodel, organization, big clean up, etc), we’d love to be involved.

For planning purposes (we need to know how many sites to have), the earlier we know the better we will be able to serve you.

We really can not stress enough that we’d love to work with your volunteers. If the past is any indicator, this works MUCH better as we provide energy and numbers while your volunteers can provide maturity, know-how, and even more importantly motivation. Knowing why something needs to be done, or even just that it makes a difference is really what gets more work done. For this reason, we are asking that at least one person from your organization be in attendance if you are asking for help.

Please email me at BonaResponds@sbu.edu AND BonaResponds@gmail.com (spam filters have caused problems before so I like the redundancy of multiple email accounts). Or feel free to call me at 585.376.0231.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to working with you.

Jim Mahar

BonaResponds