Volunteering is good. It’s good for the soul. It’s good for whoever you are helping.
I volunteered recently. Granted it wasn’t for a charity, but it was for community. The carriage driving community.
Events of any kind need volunteers. If there are no volunteers, then events can’t and won’t happen. Doesn’t matter what the event is, they need help and lots of it. Some organizations have deep pockets and can pay their help; but more times than not, there is no budget for all the help necessary to make an event successful.
I have always felt strongly that you must give back to whatever community you participate in. You can’t be a participant all of the time. You can’t just take and take and take. You have to give back or you may not have a place to play later. It’s the only way to keep your community vital. My chosen community, for now, is the horse and carriage driving community. I could not participate this year, so I volunteered. I had a BLAST!
I worked alongside my parents, one of their friends, and two people I had not met before. We had a great time. We monitored an obstacle that drivers had to negotiate. I call it monitoring because contrary to the common term that you are a judge, you’re not really judging. You have sheet to guide you and what you are supposed to look for. For example, if the driver puts his whip down, he gets penalty points against his overall score. If the driver goes the wrong route through the obstacle, they can accrue more penalty points. So you’re really more like a monitor than a judge. When I recruit people and tell them they’ll be a judge, they get worried. So I tell them they will be monitoring the obstacle and then it isn’t such a big deal. This year there were 29 participants, including five pairs drivers. It was a lot of fun to watch and cheer the drivers on as they made their way through the maze of gates.
I also got involved with Sabre Airline Solutions® Give Time Together community project. It’s a wonderful projet where employees work together on community projects volunteering their time and resources for the good of the charity of their choosing. It’s pretty darn cool, really. And the event takes place all around the world. Talk about community!
What have you done lately to help your community?
Tags: Carriage Driving, community, volunteer
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