volunteer with kids

I volunteered at a flute camp for four hours everyday for a week. :] It was amazing to see the progress these kids made in such a short amount of time. :]

Jeff and I are planning on tutoring kids with schoolonwheels.org. They organize tutors for children who are homeless.

Once a week, me and my friend go to Cotlands, a well-known charity and child sanctuary (One of the biggest in Soth Africa). I love working with children and have wanted to do this for a while, but fianlly got round to it about three months ago.

It is so worth it. Every Wednesday after school, we go to the baby ward for two hours or so, help change, feed and play with them. You grow attached to them so quickly, you cant help it. They’re all so adorable and it’s heart-breaking to think that they don’t have parents/ have parents who can’t take care of them.

I’m going to be a paeditrician when I finish school anyway, so it’s good practice and very good fun.

If you go to work with children/babies, I’d reccommend you leave the jewellery at home, wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty/stained (It’s not an exaggeration. THey get the food everywhere!) and have a lot of patience.

I set up an interview to be a Big Sister. After my interview, there’s not much to do besides wait and attend a couple of meetings before I am paired up.

I have to make sure my application is completed for the interview and get confirmation from 3 people that they will fill out a reference form for me.

My personal challenge for this one ends in a week, which is possibly problematic (depending on how you look at it) because my interview is over two weeks from now. I figure that if I’m prepared for the interview (the final step in the primary application process) within a week, I’ve met my challenge. My portion of the application is 95% done, but I haven’t contacted a single reference yet. Surely I can get that done within 7 days.

Once I get all of those ducks in a row, I can mark this Thing done (and mark off my first challenge!!!)

Started filling out my application for BB/BS last night. Next step: call my references and ask them to fill out the form.

with the volunteer coordinator today on the phone. She’s sending me an application packet tomorrow. In about a week I’ll have an interview. Progress, progress!!!

It’s been 2 days and no word back from the Big Brothers/Big Sisters in-school mentor program. From heresay, I have been given the impression that BB/BS is alive and kicking. One can only hope those sources were reliable! ...

I searched extensively for volunteer ops at United Way’s website today. I saved about 25 search results!

I chose one listing of particular interest and emailed the volunteer coordinator about it. If I don’t hear back, I have plenty more to choose from. :)

https://volunteer.united-e-way.org/uwkc/org/opp/25643206.html

Two years ago, I was a reading mentor at a school in St. Paul, MN. I had 5 kids for the entire school year (I worked with each of them one-on-one). It was truly the highlight of each week. I had a blast and my kids made some real progress. I cared about them so much.

I’m going to go on United Way’s website and see if there are any similar opportunities in Seattle.

Well I don’t acutally work directly with the kids… but I’ve become a court appointed advocate for kids stuck in the foster care system. It’s an incredibly draining task but incredibly rewarding.