Each year when our DRI Foundation Volunteer Day approaches, I get a little nervous. I worry if we will have enough people to satisfy my commitments to the recipients of our promise to help. I get a little nervous about the costs we expend to make the day happen. But those worries always fade quickly – it doesn’t take much work on my part to hear the enthusiasm from all of you for doing good in our conference’s host community!
Many of you sign up immediately, as you have in each of the previous four years that I have been doing this. Others wait until closer to the event to raise your enthusiastic hand to help out on Volunteer Day. Either way, it warms my heart each year that so many of you recognize not only the need, but the obligation that we have to make the lives of others a little brighter with our hard work. For that I am enormously appreciative.
Each of you, with your smile and a hug, make this Volunteer Day experience special for me. I know for many of you, the day represents a combined spirit of community and giving with the rare opportunity to make new friends while giving to others in need. I know many of you volunteer in your own communities, yet you still make time to help during our Volunteer Day. I much appreciate that.
This year, on Saturday, March 5, we will have two volunteer opportunities for you to choose from. The first is a morning shift (8:30 a.m. to noon) at the Atlanta Community Food Bank. An all-day volunteer effort is also available to those looking to do some light maintenance and construction (that’s from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.). This particular effort is pretty special. We will be volunteering at the Atlanta Veterans Welcome Center doing maintenance, painting, and data entry of information into a veteran’s database. This is a perfect match for us as an organization as we at the DRI Foundation are trying to do more to help our veterans.
Please watch for an e-mail from us providing details about our Friday night volunteers pep rally (in the 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. timeframe), times of departure Saturday morning (a bus is provided), where we will meet, proper attire (expect to get dirty and get paint on yourself – so bring your work clothes!), lunch options, and volunteer participants optional giving to help support the efforts.
As the numbers for the conference grow, so do our volunteer numbers. This means you will have an opportunity to make new networking friends while working and the time to swap best practices and lessons learned. We’re actually considering a BCP-lessons-learned quick tips “suggestion box” at the pep rally – and will share those tips later in the conference week.
I look forward to seeing you all in Atlanta.
All the best,
Clyde Berger
cberger@driif.org
Vice President and Director of Volunteerism
Disaster Recovery International Foundation