Volunteer work: cause & effect

[shootingstar]

When my mother would come visit me, she'd do events with me, I loved that. When she died, I sort of crawled in a shell for a long time, and I got out of doing that.

Glad you got back into it. Those events that you did with your mother are precious memories. Sounds like you're carrying part of her spirit forward.

And newsmith, I haven't gotten involved in any volunteer work, where kids would call me "Miss Jean". I'm a Jean also, in real life. How many bikes will your organization be shipping out overseas?

And abit unlike all 3 of you, including DebW, outside of my past volunteer cycling work, it's more I guess cerebral, inside stuff but still working with others.. During university I did volunteer work for a few years working in resource centre on resources on the developing countries and race relations. (the work did influence my career choice later). Afterwards 3 years for an alternative press magazine that specialized in Asian-Canadian literature, arts and social issues. Lots of work, some brilliant people and we had paid subscription mailing list of 300 from all over North America. Then volunteered for a non-profit on their national board plus fundraising, helping transcribe oral interviews for a book on experiences of some women. Organization was on race relations, human rights and immigrant service matters.

In between here and there, were the near obligatory volunteer work for professional associations that was more career/work-related. Editor of newsletter, conference papers, etc.

Then for personal interest volunteering...totally switched to cycling. ..which wasn't totally that far-removed, given the "lower" status of cycling in the big transportation world.

What I learned most was from working with some of the other volunteers in all of these organizations. Just incredible and inspiring. Unbelievable how much energy and time some folks will give.