Got 5 minutes?

Every day we are asked for our most valuable commodity, time! Whether it's your boss, spouse/partner/boyfriend/girlfriend, friend, your body asking for a break, or HandsOn Northeast Georgia asking you to volunteer, we are all asking for some of your time.

As a volunteer center, the biggest challenge we have is overcoming the response, "well I just don't have time to volunteer or to make a regular commitment." While we are always working with our agency partners to develop one-time, beneficial projects to forward their mission, there are still those that feel they just don't have the time to give. Well thanks to the folks at The Extraordinaries, there are now more opportunities to change the world that just take a few minutes.

The Extraordinaries are helping to move forward the notion of micro-volunteering. By harnessing technology, they are providing opportunities for volunteers to help out in 5 minute- 30 minute increments, whatever time you've got whenever you've got it (they even an app for that).

Today I received a new weekly newsletter that contains current projects (join e-mail list here). The project involved Twitter and harnessing ideas regarding social media, two of my favorite things. So I thought I'd walk the walk and helped out. The following is what resulted.

The Project: Scan through over 1,300 tweets about crowdsourcing at SXSW panel and vote to see which ones had good information to help them rise above the general "wow the workshop is really filling up fast" and "@___________ that was a good point" tweets to find the tweets that had good points or good tips. The end result, hopefully when this project is completed then a Top 10 tips and resources for how nonprofits can use crowdsourcing.

What I accomplished: In 15 minutes of volunteering. I scanned through 15 pages of tweets and voted on 12 tweets as containing what I thought was helpful information.

So there you have it all it took was 15 minutes and I helped move the mark a little bit further. And this was just one of the 250+ projects available. A quick glance of their website shows that KaBoom needs help mapping playscapes in communities and the Smithonian needs photos tagged to help create a searchable photo archive.

So do you have 5,10, or 15 minutes that you can help out? Remember helping some is better than none!

What to help locally? BikeAthens has a way for cyclists to help through their "share your commute" efforts. (Btw, this is also a good example of crowdsourcing which I learned about through my extraordinaires project).

HandsOn NEGA partners- are there any projects that you could use a team of micro-volunteers to help tackle bit by bit? Let us know!

MLK Day Wrap-up

First of all, we want to thank the over 1200 volunteers who participated at 30 different worksites for the MLK Day of Service 2010. Thank you to all those who came out to help!
Now, we want to hear from you. If you have a great story about this MLK Day or any MLK Day in the past, we want to hear it! Leave us a comment below, send us a message on Facebook, or drop us an email. Let us know about your experience volunteering. Check out these testimonials and pictures from two of our agency partners: BikeAthens and Habitat for Humanity. Also be sure to check our Picasa and our youtube pages for pictures and videos of the event. Again, thank you to all those who volunteered! Let us know about your MLK Day experience.

Are you Involved or Committed?

This week we participated in the Junior League of Athens, Seeing is Believing Bus Tour of the local schools. The event over all was great and insightful. The tour and speakers were able to highlight many of the great enrichment activities and programs that the schools offer and some share some of the successes that the numbers don't always show.

During the morning, one of the speakers discusses the importance of not just being involved in our schools and with our youth but the need to make a real commitment- to invest of yourself. He highlighted his talk with an analogy about involvement versus commitment by discussing breakfast. The speaker said to think about the eggs, toast, and bacon or ham that people eat for breakfast. You see the chicken, they were involved in providing the eggs your eating, but the pig he really committed himself to the cause.

Many time we as volunteer participate in activities in the community and our schools. We attend days of service like MLK Day, Hands On Athens, and Rivers Alive. We attend fundraisiers and support canned food drives and buy Girl Scout cookies. And while these are all GREAT and important activities that result in a lot of good for our community- there is still a large need for committed volunteers to take on the leadership roles and undertake the organizing of the projects. Schools and nonprofits need volunteers to make that on-going commitment to help plan an event or to lend your skills and expertice to a larger, on-going project.

So as we move forward in banding together through these tough times- we ask all our volunteers to ask yourself are you involved or are you committed? If you want to make that commitment or have an idea, but just don't know where to start- give HandsOn a call. We have leadership opportunities and can provide you with the training and tools you'll need to tackle any cause. And to those of you that have already made the commitment by serving on a PTO or board, by serving as a project leader or a regular volunteer for a project. We thank you for making that commitment.

The Red Cross

I've been doing some work with the Emergency Services section of the East Georgia Chapter of the Red Cross. What I've learned has opened my eyes some. We all know that the Red Cross will assist during natural disasters but they do much more than hand out coffee. They provide shelters to the disaster victims as well as food and water. The Red Cross works with community partners and refers out clients to those partner agencies, based on needs, for things such as small business loans, house rebuilding loans, and personal loans. They don't give the loans, the partner agencies do that. They are NOT a government agency and are funded by donations from the individuals and business in the communities they serve. They also respond to house fires, when notified, and provide assistance, on a case by case basis, with housing, medicines, and some cash. For our Service members, the Red Cross is chartered by Congress to verify emergency leave requests and pass them to each of the service branches so they can pass the requests to the service member’s command. Each service members command makes the decision to grant or deny this leave. In some of these cases financial aid is requested. The Red Cross submits the request with documentation to the Military Aid Society and it grants or denies the request. All these services and they're done, mostly, by volunteers! These volunteers may have regular jobs during the day or night or may be retired. They are extensively trained by the local chapters, at no charge. There are about five basic courses all volunteers are given and then specific training for each area they choose to 'specialize' in. The Red Cross is extremely proud of these volunteers and their dedication to serve their community. Are you interested? Please click on the link(http://eastgeorgia.redcross.org/ ) and check it out. Also, next time you see a Red Cross volunteer, tell them thank you!!