Volunteering?

From the time I started to work in education, I became a volunteer. I was a volunteer coach, tutor, union rep, organizer, etc. When I retired, I continue to volunteer. It is an important part of who I am and what I do. Volunteering is the time I give to strengthen my community and improve others’ quality of life as well as my own. There are so many ways to be involved in the community that I don’t understand why so few volunteers. You can find volunteering opportunities that:

·       Speak to your passion

·       Suit your personality

·       Meet your interests

·       Build on your experiences

·       Fit into your lifestyle

·       Contribute to your health and well-being

You may be at a point in your life when you do not want to take on any more responsibility or you may be in a position to take charge. There is a wide spectrum of volunteer opportunities available to suit a range of interests and circumstances.

You can volunteer…

·       From home

·       In an office

·       In a garden Overseas

·       With family and friends

·       On your own

·       Just in the summer

·       Once a year Every day

·       Now, later Short-term,

·       longer-term, ongoing,

·       or occasionally

The possibilities Combine volunteering with other things that are important in your life such as:

·       Time with family (volunteer with

·       your family or in your

·       grandchildren’s school)

·       Travelling (joining an international development project overseas)

·       LEADERSHIP Facilitate a strategic planning session Serve on a Board or Committee Chair a fundraising campaign Help start a tenants’ rights association

·       MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION Review a Human Resources Manual Organize a volunteer schedule for an event Enter data at a resource centre Provide general office help

·       TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA Design a website for an elder-care co-op Write a blog on affordable housing Customize a donor database for a food bank Teach computer skills in a community centre

·       BUILDING AND HANDICRAFTS Build a bookshelf for a reading room Sew costumes for a play Teach card-making in a rehabilitation centre Build a stage for marathon ceremonies

What type of volunteering can I do?

·       NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT Walk a dog for a local animal shelter Research pesticide bylaws in different cities Plant vegetables in a community garden

·       ONE-TO-ONE SUPPORT Tutor children Comfort a victim of violence Be a mentor to a teen Coach an executive director

·       DIRECT SERVICE Answer the phones for a helpline Prepare lunch in a soup kitchen Coach a team Drive people to medical appointments

·       ENTERTAINMENT Play piano for a sing-a-long at a retirement residence MC at a volunteer service awards night Do a stand-up comedy act at a fundraiser Join a choir that entertains at community events Spending time with friends (get a group together to plan a special event) Hobbies (teach puppet-making in a community centre) Recreation (be a swimming buddy for someone with a disability)

In addition to the valuable contribution you make to the community, volunteering has been proven to have many benefits for you as a volunteer:

·       Opportunities to Learn new skills Expand horizons Maintain or establish a sense

·       of belonging Expand social and business contacts Stay active

·       Reduction of Stress, anxiety, depression Low self-esteem Social isolation Stress-related illness

·       Volunteering and retirement planning

·       Volunteering can play a key role at every stage but it can also serve as a way to help you through transitions, such as retirement. Volunteering can contribute to your quality of life today and allow you to create a legacy for the future.

Whether your transition or retirement involves a change in your household, neighbourhood, health situation, employment status, or daily schedule, volunteering can make your days both meaningful and satisfying in new ways.

Volunteering can connect you to your community, help you maintain your skills or develop new skills, and allow you to participate in the democratic process. Through volunteering, you can help shape and preserve the society you want to live in—for yourself and for generations to come.

www.getvolunteering.ca

How to find the right volunteer opportunity:

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

·       What matters to me?

·       What skills and experiences do

·       I want to share or develop?

·       What setting would be best for me?

·       Are there others I know who might

·       like to volunteer together?

·       What are the challenges and issues in my community, country, in the world?

Take the Volunteer Quiz and get some ideas of what might suit your interests, skills, and personality.

www.getinvolved.ca

To find current opportunities, call an organization you know, contact

your local volunteer centre, look in your neighbourhood newspaper, or check out websites or databases for volunteers.

·       www.volunteer.ca

·       www.getinvolved.ca

·       www.charityvillage.ca

·       www.govolunteer.ca

A realization

 One of the joys of being retired is that you can begin to wake up to the truth of your beauty and energy, knowing that you're not alone and that life is a playground, not a laboratory; an adventure, not a test. If it was a test you have passed it and now in retirement, you can become who you dreamed, you'd become, and exactly who your world most needs you to be.

And, perhaps most of all, knowing that your thoughts create, your words shape, and your deeds summon the energy that allows you to face retirement with the grace and dignity you deserve. 

Confucius said

 A saying of Confucius which can help us understand the wisdom of ageing.

At 15 I set my heart on learning, at 30 I knew where I stood, at 40 I had no more doubts, at 50 I knew the will of Heaven, at 60 my ears were attuned, and at 70 I followed my heart’s desire without crossing the line.

Confucius observed that new insights and understanding can be achieved at each stage of life. Looking back on his own experience, he reflected that every new chapter brings a unique role to play, and a new chance to grow. So as you age, become attuned to your surroundings and follow your heart's desire. You will be better for it as will your loved ones.

Life-Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian

 One of the joys of my week is the twice-a-week email I get called the Marginalian. It is always a fun read and I highly recommend it to all. Her latest post is called 16 life-learnings. I have left out the best parts, so to read the rest of this wonderful essay, go to her site

Several years in, I thought it would be a good exercise to reflect on what I was learning about life in the course of composing. Starting at year seven, I began a sort of public diary of learnings And now, at year sixteen, here they all are, dating back to the beginning

1.                Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.

2.                Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone.

3.                Be generous. Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words.

4.                Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom.

5.                As Maya Angelou famously advised, when people tell you who they are, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them.

6.                Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, and our ability to perform this or that.

7.                “Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.” This is borrowed from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman, for it’s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy

8.                Seek out what magnifies your spirit. Patti Smith, in discussing William Blake and her creative influences, talks about writers and artists who magnified her spirit — it’s a beautiful phrase and a beautiful notion.

9.                Don’t be afraid to be an idealist. There is much to be said for our responsibility as creators and consumers of that constant dynamic interaction we call culture — which side of the fault line between catering and creating are we to stand on?

10.           Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lays dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modelling its opposite.

11.           A reflection originally offered by way of a wonderful poem about pi: Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.

12.           Because Year 12 is the year in which I finished writing Figuring (though it emanates from my entire life), and because the sentiment, which appears in the prelude, is the guiding credo to which the rest of the book is a 576-page footnote, I will leave it as it stands: There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

13.           In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again.

14.           Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us.

1.    Delight in the age-salted man on the street corner waiting for the light to change, his age-salted dog beside him, each inclined toward the other with the angular subtlety of absolute devotion.

2.    Delight in the little girl zooming past you on her little bicycle, this fierce emissary of the future, rainbow tassels waving from her handlebars and a hundred beaded braids spilling from her golden helmet.

3.    Delight in the snail taking an afternoon to traverse the abyssal crack in the sidewalk for the sake of pasturing on a single blade of grass.

4.    Delight in the tiny new leaf, so shy and so shamelessly lush, unfurling from the crooked stem of the parched geranium.

5.    I think often of this verse from Jane Hirshfield’s splendid poem “The Weighing”:

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

Yes, except we furnish both the grains and the scales. I alone can weigh the blue of my sky, you of yours.

15.           Outgrow yourself.

16.           Unself. Nothing is more tedious than self-concern.