Is your calendar too full to volunteer to help others? Perhaps you have tried volunteering your time in the past but found that your time was not used efficiently and you gave up trying? Deborah Mitchell of West Windsor offers tips for people to perform good services without signing up to do specific tasks at specific times at specific locations. She writes a column for www.charityguide.org that gives easy-to-do volunteer activities that you can do in 15 minutes or less. ##M:[more]##
“Flexible volunteers perform activities to help the planet, people, or animals, but they do so on their own schedule, and the beneficiaries of their activities are the planet, people, or animals,” she says. “In keeping with the flexible volunteer concept of Charity Guide — and that September is the time for fall cleaning and thus gathering things that could be recycled, there are a few ideas for people who want to help the environment on their own schedule and be flexible volunteers for the planet.”
Mitchell, who was born in Ewing and raised in Hamilton, is a graduate of Trenton State College with a degree in English. Over the years she worked for various publishing companies as a typesetter, an editor, and then writing. For 25 years she has worked with Medical World Business and associated businesses as a freelancer. Her speciality is complementary medicine and nutrition and she has written many books including, “Natural Healing for Back Pain,” “The Natural Guide to Headache Relief,” The Dictionary of Nutritional Healing,” and “Natural Aphrodisiacs.
She began working with Charity Guide by answering an ad to promote flexible volunteer ideas. The site began on June 1, but the concept is older, is not politically motivated, and does not cost anything.
She moved to West Windsor 18 months ago when both of her parents were ill. Her father died recently and her mother, who still lives in Hamilton, had a stroke.
Her husband, John Falk, is a retired professor at Rutgers. “He’s another set of eyes for everything I write,” she says. They live in Penns Neck with their cat, Antonio Carlos Joe Beam, who was named after a jazz musician.
“I’ve been recycling for 30 years and have close to 20 canvas bags that I carry to the supermarket,” she says. “They have called me the bag lady for years.”
Easy volunteer activities include donating your old cell phone, leaving grass clippings on the lawn, banishing pesticides from your garden, writing a letter to the editor to inspire action, joining a neighborhood watch group, sending a get well card to a hospitalized child, donating food gift certificates to the homeless, reporting potholes, or donating your out-of-prescription eyeglasses.
Mitchell suggests that you can promote reading by donating books to libraries, schools, or shelters. If you use a laundramat, start a box of books for people to read. Start a lending library. Give books as gifts.
When you travel choose a green hotel, one that uses energy in environmentally ways by switching to energy-efficient lighting or using waste water to irrigate the golf course. Participate in recycling efforts that the hotel promotes, including not having sheets and towels washed every day.
Donations of used women’s clothing are always needed by organizations, Mitchell says. Gently used women’s professional clothing is needed for women returning or entering the business world. Donate your used wedding dress and accessories to help others through such organizations as Brides Against Breast Cancer. Mastectomy bras, swim wear, and other specialty clothing items are needed by breast cancer survivors who often cannot afford these costly items. Women’s resource centers often seek maternity clothing.
High Schools North and South collect used prom and other formal dresses for young women who otherwise would not be able to attend their high school prom. Both schools also have clothing drives to raise money for post-prom parties, alcohol-free events held after the senior prom.
Assign chores to your children that involve environmental issues including recycling items in the house, gathering materials for the compost, filling the feeders for the wildlife, or watering the vegetable garden. Have an environmental birthday party including making artwork using recycled objects such as bottle caps and plastic lids, or make bird feeders using recyclable plastic bottles.
Visit www.charity.guide.org/ volunteer for more ideas about how to be a flexible volunteer.
Mitchell says her favorite book is Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity is the motto I live by, and I personally think the world would be in much better shape — spiritually and environmentally — if we lived by the Walden credo.”
