What about Community Service? Environmental Concerns

Today we will look at some of the volunteer opportunities that are available for home schooled kids and teens that involve the environment or animal well being. Here is a sample of available opportunities near our home. No doubt there are many near your home as well.

• Help clear, maintain and renovate trails in a 1200 acre county park - used by hikers, equestrians and bicyclers
• Volunteers needed to work with Master Gardeners and people with disabilities to maintain gardens. Willingness to get dirty and have fun.
• Work with staff from Great Swamp Outdoor Education Center or Pyramid Mountain on programs and events, leading hikes or operating the visitors centers.
• Volunteers will be trained on how to assist marine mammals that have become beached. Individuals will learn basic skills to assist the staff of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
• We are desperately seeking foster homes for Beagles coming into our rescue program.
• Help the environment in your community. Typical tasks include: sprucing up flower and shrub beds, clearing fence lines, painting benches and litter cans, removing non-native weeds.
• Help the environment by documenting and removing debris from the shores of your favorite ocean, river, estuary, sound, lake, pond, or stream.

The website below has a variety of different choices of things to do with the unique hook of three time frames: how to make a difference in 15 minutes, a couple of hours, or on a volunteer vacation. Obviously, a lot of these would not qualify as community service, but you can use these ideas to brainstorm your own family project.

What about Community Service? Working with Seniors

There are many opportunities to enrich the lives of your home schooled teens by matching them up with a senior citizen. Seniors often need help that a teen might provide, whether they live independently or in an assisted living or even long term care facility.

Here are some representative listings of current opportunities to work with seniors in New Jersey from just one volunteering website.

Computer Tutor - Tutor seniors on computer basics, such as e-mail, surfing the internet, etc.

Friendly visitor - Read, play games, converse, walk, attend programs together or be a " Special Pal" to one particular resident.

Walking with a Senior - Walk with a senior or group of seniors indoors or outdoors on facility property.

In House mail delivery at senior facility.

Visit with Senior residents - Spend some time with our senior residents and it will be as rewarding for you as it is for them! Share your stories, play an instrument, read to them, play a game, or just take a walk with them and enjoy the scenery.

Craft time - Come teach our resident seniors a craft OR share your hobby/collection with us!

Special event recorder - Volunteer as a photographer at special events throughout the year. Help set up for special events.

LINK is a volunteer support program that places high school students with elderly or disabled residents. Students visit one to two hours each week, providing friendship across the generations, learning from their elder friends, and performing a few light housekeeping tasks.

Good grief, that alone could keep you busy for a long time. And most schools only require 20-40 hours of community service to be rendered over four years. Not that we need to feel that we have to match the schools in every "requirement", but there are many benefits to volunteering that have nothing to do with meeting someone's bogus "requirements."

I can remember that my mother-in-law had several teenaged helpers over the years who performed light housekeeping and ran errands. She was disabled and was only able to leave the house with great difficulty, but she was also fiercely independent, and determined to live alone for as long as possible.

The relationships she developed with the girls who came to her as part of the program lasted for the rest of her life, and in several cases have extended to the rest of our family and endured through the years since her death.

She was not the only one who benefited from the relationships - in every case these girls received love and valuable mentoring from a very wise woman. Not only that, she lived in a two-family house upstairs from HER 90 year old mother who was constantly in and out of the apartment.

I am so grateful that my children had the unique experience of a close relationship with a senior. Most teens these days probably have grandparents my age or a little older, so they may not really have the chance to be an intimate companion of someone who is REALLY old during those impressionable teen years. My daughter knew three out of four of her grandparents, and two of her great grandmothers - one of whom lived to 104!

If you are involved with a church, there are probably elderly members who could use some kind of assistance. Check with your pastor or volunteer coordinator for more information. If you are not involved with a church, there are a number of organizations that can connect you with opportunities to work with Seniors. A few of these are listed here.

www.volunteermatch.org
www.volunteersolutions.org
www.idealist.org
www.1-800-volunteer.org

What about Community Service? A look at CERT programs

A relatively new requirement for graduation in New Jersey, and many other states, is community service. Well, I am not sure if it is required statewide, but it certainly seems to be in our community.

Actually, home schooling provides more time for diverse community service opportunities. The next several posts will showcase different kinds of community service projects a homeschooled student might consider.

Our community just had an emergency drill for first responders all over the county that simulated the crash of a small plane in a field behind the local high school.

Members of the high school drama group participated in this drill by portraying the dead and injured. But among the responders and CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams - a partner of CitizenCorps, a US government initiative to get all Americans to volunteer and serve) there were only two young people - you guessed it, they were homeschooled.

CERT programs are sponsored by city, state, and local emergency management agencies. Using the training learned in the classroom and during exercises, CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available to help. If a disaster happens that overwhelms local response capability, CERT members can apply the training learned in the classroom and during exercises to give critical support to their family, loved ones, neighbors or associates in their immediate area until help arrives.

CERT members can also assist with non-emergency projects that improve the safety of the community, or increase awareness of emergency preparedness resources. For example, our whole family participated in "National Night Out", a crime and drug prevention event in the parking lots of the municipal complex/police department featuring various games, music, contests, vendors, community organizations, fire department demonstrations and donated food and snacks by local merchants. My son manned a game booth and dispensed prizes to the kids who played.

High school aged students may take the CERT training, but cannot be certified or deployed until they are 18. I heartily recommend CERT training for every student, for the discipline, first aid and emergency training and the opportunity to learn about the careers of firefighters, police and EMS workers at the local and county levels.