Community Giving
I have been an active volunteer in the community for over forty years. During that time, I have been fortunate to receive a number of awards from the organizations I volunteer with, a scholarship to complete a training in volunteer management and requests to take on additional leadership roles and serve on a couple Boards. In 2017, I did some self-reflection and looked at the number of organizations I was involved with (& this was after a 60 hour work week). I decided to retire from my volunteer roles at the end of the year and made training manuals for my roles, as needed, to help with the transition. Moving forward, I wanted to select a couple areas to focus on. Below is a summary of what I am currently involved with.
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Families in Education
The first time I started this was in 2017. One of my friends is a teacher at an elementary school and works with families in need. When transitioning to a minimalist lifestyle, the first step I did was take a quick run though my belongings. After living at my place for 14 years, I had accumulated things I didn't use anymore. I gathered some and put them in bags. One of my neighbors was moving and had kids. I asked if I could have the tings they don't use anymore. Between clothes and home goods, I had collected over 300 items. Over the holiday, I went over some more items and put together another 100. Instead of bringing items I collect from family and friends to a thrift store, I give them to her. As of 2019, I have donated over 1,000 items.
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Homeless Shelter
The same friend I work with to bring supplies to her students and their families has a friend who runs a homeless shelter. Everything she does not use in the donations is given to her friend. Since 2017, we have been able to fill three jeeps with supplies to share with the clients.
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I also have an Old Navy Credit Card just for this purpose. I put all my purchases on the credit card, no matter how small the amount. That way, I can earn Old Navy Cash. Every month, I use the cash to purchase new items on clearance. I enjoy the challenge of seeing how many items I can get each month with the funds I have to work with to support the families in need. My friend will collect the items I give her and give them to either the students, parents or the shelter.
Rescue Dogs
I work at many special events and one year, connected with a great organization who works with placing rescue dogs. After they asked me to watch their dogs so they could finish packing up their booth after the event, I was hooked. The only reason I didn't adopt those dogs then was because they were already taken. Every year since 2017, I take a portion of the income from all my part time jobs and make an annual donation to the group to help support their work. In 2019, I started volunteering at their adoption events.
Soap Partnership
In 2017, I was managing projects for a healthcare organization. During one of my vacations, I had discovered a non-profit that collects bars of soap from hotels, sanitizes them, and makes new bars of soap to give to homeless shelters. There was no similar activity like this where I lived so I started my own soap partnership. I learned about their sanitation process and created a similar one on a smaller scale. After contacting all the area hotels, I found one manager who wanted to partner with me since he was looking for a community engagement activity for their staff. I would send them photos of the process and updates on the numbers of bars of soap I would make and which shelters I shared them with so he could share the information at the staff meetings. Unfortunately, we had to stop after only a year. An epidemic hit our community so we had to stop the collection. Nevertheless, up until then, we were able to make 700 bars to share.
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