do some volunteer work

How I did it: It sounded like a great idea, to spend a few hours of my day painting benches outside of a home for low-income seniors (mostly old cubans like my grandparents it turned out). And man was i disappointed. First of all it was sponsored by disney. When we got there they MADE us stand in a line to get a goodie bag which contained mickey ears and a mickey glove, as well as a shirt with a Disney logo on it. they tried to get us to change into the shirts and wear the dumb ears and glove for a bunch of photos with donald and daisy duck. we were among the very few (out of the 200+  people who showed up) who wouldnt, and we stayed well away from the photo-op group. A bunch of people (the mayor, the "president of disney world" and some others) gave speeches. Good morning america filmed the event live. We got there at 7 am (as was requested of us), and the actual work didnt start until 9:30. I could have painted 10 benches by then but as it turned out, I didnt have to. There were only 2 benches. Thats right, 2. 12 of us had signed up to paint benches, so they took some of us and got us to paint metal beams of an outdoor walkway instead. As my sister and i were painting (and wondering aloud why we were painting an area that looked perfect. as though it had recently been painted...) an old woman walked up and told us it was ridiculous that we were painting...since what we were painting had been painted TWO WEEKS BEFORE. When we complained to the guy who was supervising us he told us it had actually only been primed. So we kept painting even though it was kind of disheartening to not see a difference before and after. Then an old man walked by and said they were only having us do this work so disney could get pictures of us with paint brushes in our hands. And that if we really wanted to make a difference we should go over to a building on the other side of the property that was really in disrepair. Of course that wasnt on the agenda. I overheard a conversation between two volunteers who had signed up to clean up garbage that had washed up on the shore (this place is behind the miami river) and they were saying there wasnt any garbage to clean up. And someone said "of course disney already had people clean it up. do you think they would take a bunch of pictures at a place full of garbage?" It just seemed so phony. While walking around my sister and i ran into some old ladies walking their dogs (separate encounters) and both times the women seemed so happy to have someone to talk to. It got me thinking that it would just be better to talk to these people than pretend i was doing something to help them when i really wasnt. All in
all kind of a depressing day.

Lessons & tips: Even though I said my efforts were not worth it, I am only referring to this specific volunteer opportunity. I have not given up on volunteering in general. I think I will just be wary of anything with a huge corporate sponsor.

Resources: Hands on Miami is a local group that gets the word out about various volunteer projects in my area. They have monthly calendars full of all types of volunteer projects one can sign up for (and almost all of them guaranteed to be more rewarding than this one).

Oct 07, 08:01PM PDT | 1 comment | 2 cheers