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VOLUNTEER VOICE NEWSLETTER July/Aug 2017
PEN PALS WRAP UP THE YEAR WITH CLASS PARTIES! This year Volunteer Connections coordinated 12 classes in
the Evergreen and Vancouver School districts to participate
in our popular “Pen Pal” program. We had 187 dedicated
adult volunteers paired with 225 5th grade students. That’s
one of the largest programs ever! The Pen Pal program has
been going on for over 20 years. Some of our current adult
volunteers were once 5th grade students who participated in
the program. We will begin recruiting for new Pen Pals in
September. To be a Pen Pal you agree to write one letter or
postcard per month during the
school year. The 5th grade student you write to will be
sending you a letter monthly too. In late May and early
June Pen Pals meet for the first and only time at a des-
sert party at the school.
This year five volunteers assisted us in coordinating the
exchange of letters between
adults and students. Our deepest
thanks to Amber Bushaw, Pat
Tucker, Barbara Pardee, Martha Hancock, and Marna Hop-
kins, and earlier in the year, Steve Smith.
We will begin recruiting for the next school year’s coordina-
tors and Pen Pals in late August and September. Watch your
emails and our Facebook page for announcements!
VISTA NEWS
Volunteers In Service to America
HOUSE MINISTRIES
FEATURED PARTNER: OPEN HOUSE MINISTRIES
The Volunteer Voice Newsletter is a publication of the Human Services Council
Volunteer Connections Program.
Volunteer Connections mission is to connect the wisdom, experience, and talents of volunteers
with opportunities to enrich the quality of life for themselves and their communities
Human Services Council, a 501 c 3 organization
Our mission is to improve people’s lives by connecting them to opportunities, information, and
services that respond to their individual and family needs.
Copyright@2017 Human Services Council-Volunteer Connections, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this newsletter because you are or have been a volunteer with one of our
programs, are a partner agency or signed up on our website or at an event.
To remove your name from the e-newsletter mailing list please email:
marciah@hsc-wa.org
For questions or comments contact rsvp@hsc-wa.org
“Grandma Rose” Funk meets
her Burnt Bridge Creek stu-
dent Imereta at the annual
party.
It doesn’t take long to find lots to
talk about after you’ve been
writing to each other all year!
Yummy homemade pie at
the Hearthwood Party!
VOLUNTEER MARY BERG KEEPS BUSY AT OPEN
Volunteer Connections has been gifted with many
talented and generous volunteers. We highlight just one
of those this month – Mary Berg. Mary is a retired 7th
grade teacher from Battle Ground and Evergreen School
districts. She started volunteering at Open House
Ministries three years ago and is very dedicated to her
duties at the agency. Among the items donated to Open
House Ministries are greeting cards and books. The
cards and envelopes may not be together and need a
little loving care! She
separates the envelopes and
cards and starts matching the
cards with the right size of envelope. When
completed, the cards are a very popular sales item in
the thrift store. She examines each one of the books
and only those that are in perfect condition go on
their shelves. The remainder are given to other
outlets including Powell’s Book Store. She spends
two days a week in the antiques room, pricing items,
assisting customers, and helping to display the
antiques in a beautiful manner. She is a professed
outdoor person; this includes yard work in addition to hiking, biking and other
activities. Besides her husband, her family includes three daughters, one son
and six grandchildren. Mary feels she is blessed because her work at Open
House allows her to help other people and give back to the community. Thank
you, Mary!
VISTA, a program of the Corporation for National and
Community Service, currently has four serving mem-
bers in SW Washington. Jade Dudley is working with
Southwest Washington Elder Abuse Prevention Coali-
tion doing a fantastic job in community outreach. She
has been networking all over the area and giving
presentations on recognizing the signs of elder abuse
and what to do when you see it. Recently Jade repre-
sented SWEAP at the “Longest Day”, an Alzheimer’s
Awareness event.
VISTA Piper Krabbenhoft is very busy this time of year
at the Clark County Food Bank. She has been recruit-
ing volunteers to help in a variety of tasks from tabling at the Farmer’s Market, to
activities at the Heritage Farm. She’s been
busy making community connections too, for
instance she was shopping at an early spring
Farmer’s Market and struck up a conversation
with a woman who offered to get the 350 cab-
bage plants needed for the Heritage Farm
started in her greenhouse. This new volunteer
is recruiting other friends with backyard green-
houses to do some additional plant starting for
next year too!
VISTA Ryan Gilson at Second Step Housing has been working hard on some
basic infrastructure needs for his agency. He recently restructured the agency’s
network drive reducing the top level items on the file system from 210 down to 5!
In addition, he’s been recruiting new partners and volunteers to help with events
like the recent “Run Like A Girl” which raised a record amount of donations this
year!
Charles Marentes, our newest VISTA serving at Vancouver Public Schools has
been spending much of his time getting up to speed on the two years of project
development done by his predecessor, Danielle Hellums. Charles is currently
meeting with VPS staff /faculty to determine how they are using the research
done so far and how they are implementing programs to address chronic absen-
teeism. The majority of his work will be to insure that the program is implement-
ed district wide and staff/faculty are trained to administer the techniques.
Jade Dudley at the “Longest
Day” event June 21.
NOW RECRUITING FOR NEXT SCHOOL YEAR!
Lunch Buddies, Tutors, and Mentors
It seems like school just got out! In fact it did, as the schools
had an extra long year to make up for all the snow days we had
last winter! School will start up again soon. One of our most
critical RSVP assignments is the Lunch Buddy program. All of
the schools in both districts need caring adult volunteers who
can be positive role models in the lives of children experiencing
changes at home, difficulty in school, or who just need a caring adult in their
lives. Buddies typically meet with their students at the school, once a week for
about 45 minutes. You may eat lunch with the student or play a board game, do
a craft, read or just talk.
Both Evergreen and Vancouver School District will be in need of literacy and
math tutors to work with various grade levels. Most tutors work one-on-one at
the school with a child.
The Salvation Army “Say Klub” serves children
in grades 1-5 who attend Marrion or Fircrest
Elementary Schools. “Say Klub” is held Tues-
day through Friday during the school year. Vol-
unteers have a variety of tasks including riding
along to pick kids up from school, reading to
kids, helping with homework and projects, and
tutoring in literacy.
Each of these activities is a volunteer position that collets “outcome” based data.
If you are an RSVP volunteer (55 and over) you will be asked to fill out a simple
survey at the beginning and end of the school year that confirms the number of
students you’ve worked with, and asks for a gauge of student improvement dur-
ing your time with them.
If helping kids in these ways sounds like fun, please contact us now as we gear
up for the coming school season. Contact Jo at jo@hsc-wa.org, or call 360-735-
3690.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the most famous early Ameri-
cans, is also known as the Founding Father of Ameri-
can volunteerism. He gathered volunteers to sweep the
streets of Philadelphia, organized the nation’s first vol-
unteer fire department, established a voluntary militia
and organized a philosophical society. His philosophy
was “one served not to save their soul, but to build a
strong society.”
Not sure how to get started as a volunteer? Interested
in finding a new volunteer opportunity? Do you know of
a non-profit that needs help recruiting volunteers?
Contact Volunteer Connections and we’ll help you find your volunteer niche or
help that non-profit find the help it needs. Contact Marcia at 360-735-6393 or
Jo at 360-735-3690.
THE FOUNDING FATHER OF AMERICAN VOLUNTEERISM
WE LOVE OUR “LIKES” BUT WE NEED SOME
SHARES!
Thanks to everyone who “likes” our Facebook page! We’d appreciate it if you
would “share” our page too, so more people learn about the many ways to
volunteer in Clark County!
WEBSITE UPGRADE: THINGS LOOK DIFFERENT!
If you’ve visited our website recently, you may
have noticed that things look different! Over
the last few months our parent agency, The
Human Services Council, underwent a mas-
sive website overhaul to accommodate a new
ride scheduling portal.
This necessitated Volunteer Connections re-
designing our site as well. The biggest
change is the location of a couple of key tabs many of you use. You’ll notice the
search bar looks different. Across the top you’ll see “Home” “Volunteer”
“Americorps VISTA”, “Current Volunteers” “Partnerships” and “Volunteer Center
News”. If you access the website on your phone or tablet the above screen shot
may “shrink” the tab selections. Not to worry, you can still find what you need.
As the above diagram indicates, if you only see the “Home” and “Partnerships”
tab, click on the little arrow next to Partnerships and
that will take you to Current Volunteers, where you’ll
find “enter hours”.
To log on to report your hours or to send us a mes-
sage select the tab “Current Volunteers”. Click on
the small down arrow you see next to the words
Current Volunteers. That will bring up two selec-
tions: Enter Hours and Contact Us. Select Enter
Hours and you should go to the regular log in
screen you’ve always used. If this does not happen,
please let us know by sending an email telling us
what happened. You may also send your hours via email if you are unable to ac-
cess your usual reporting page. (jo@hsc-wa.org).
If you get a Fatal Error message you will need to refresh your web browser as it is
trying to connect to the old website. Consult your help option for your computer to
find out how to do a refresh. You should see a page that has the Interstate Bridge
and the Volunteer Connections logo. The new site looks like the screenshot at
the beginning of this article.
Open House Ministries is a faith-based community
organization helping homeless families by provid-
ing shelter and intervention through Christ-
centered, life changing programs.
Second Hand Solutions, where our featured volun-
teer shares her time, is located at 915 West 13th
Street in Vancouver. Common Grounds Coffee
Shop is located in the thrift
store with Wheel Deals
Bicycle shop next door.
Volunteers are critical to the mission of Open House
Ministries as their contribution of time and talent allows
OHM to provide the highest level of programming so
the families served by the Ministry become self-
sufficient contributing members of the community.
OHM has created an environment for volunteers where
they are treated as a partner and their involvement is
vital to a strong community. Currently, about 150 vol-
unteers support OHM staff on a monthly basis.
According to Volunteer Resources Coordinator, Clau-
dia Merritt, they seek people with skills and a passion
and respect for the mission and goals of OHM and who will be an appropriate
fit for the open positions. Visit their website at sheltered.org to learn more.
Right now they are searching for Receptionist volunteers. You’ll answer the
phones, receive donations, direct the public and residents, and other light
clerical duties. Contact Volunteer Connections for more details about this po-
sition, 360-735-3690.
Chaplain Mark Roskam
guides the ministry of OHM
and enjoys spending time in
the bike shop.
Second Hand Solutions Thrift store
full of treasures and a great coffee
shop too!
SENIOR MESSENGER WANTS YOUR STORIES! AND SO
DO WE!
The Senior Messenger introduced a new column in
February called “Your Encore”. The Encore column
is an opportunity for Messenger readers to share their
personal experiences and tap the skills and experi-
ences of boomers and seniors to improve communi-
ties. The intent is for readers to write the column on
such topics as arts and culture, environments, eco-
nomic and community development and other subjects of interest to the read-
ers of Senior Messenger. You can submit your Encore stories of 650 words
of less by the 10th of each month to news@seniormessenger.org or by regu-
lar mail to The Messenger, Your Encore, 400 E. Evergreen Blvd #111 Van-
couver 98660.
We at Volunteer Connections would love your stories too, especially about
volunteering. As many of you know, we receive a large portion of our funds
from the Corporation for National and Community Service through the Re-
tired and Senior Volunteer Program, RSVP. Sharing a story about your vol-
unteer service goes along way in allowing us to show the value of the work
done by volunteers. If you’d like to share a story about your volunteer work
please do so (and you don’t have to be an RSVP volunteer only). Just send
it to Marcia, our Project Coordinator email her at marciah@hsc-wa.org.
Piper gives many tours to partners like
these interns from the Murdoch Trust.
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