Conscious Choice: Don't Just Sit There

August 1999

Don't Just Sit There

by Deb Unferth

With heat soaking the city, street fairs at their height, and days at their longest, we find ourselves active, and perhaps, happy. Now is the perfect time to redirect some energy into the community we are a part of. Nothing renews the community more than to volunteer your time, and Chicago is the perfect place to help out. Whether you want to work on preserving the environment, helping kids in need, or feeding the homeless, there are dozens of programs around the city that could use your skills and time. Here are a few ideas of projects and places that would surely appreciate a hand.

Kid Stuff

One of the best organizations in the city for building a relationship with a needy child is the Friends First program at the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. Similar to Big Brothers/Big Sisters, volunteers are matched with an "at-risk" child to form a "mentoring pair," as Tim Henry, director of volunteer services, calls them. The pairs spend four hours a week together, doing fun and inexpensive activities like walking around downtown, tossing a ball at the lake, and going to street festivals or to the library. Every month Henry puts out a newsletter listing activity suggestions and announcing events and parties.

Some pairs work on strange, creative projects: one pair, for example, likes to go dumpster diving and then make lamps and tables out of the stuff they find. According to Henry, it really doesn’t matter what you do as long as it’s together because the goal is to help them learn relationship-building skills and to have stronger self-expectations.

Henry has worked with the program for nine years and loves it, partly because it’s so effective. "I think sometimes volunteers don’t realize how much of an impact they’re having," he tells me. He believes the mentors intervene early enough in the kids’ lives — the youngest are nine years old — to teach them responsibility, kindness, and creativity. "You can’t do that just with a poster at school that says‘Just Say No’," he says. To get involved, call Tim Henry at 312-738-4384.

If you would like to work with kids but prefer academic tutoring, The Mercy Home also has relationship-based tutoring. And another terrific program is Cabrini Connections, traditionally held in the Montgomery Ward building near Cabrini Green, and currently in search of a home. Connections has been so popular among the Cabrini kids that the program doesn’t even take outside referrals anymore. The kids refer each other. Gena Schoen, the director, assigns one student at a time to one particular volunteer; the pairs meet each week.

What is interesting to me about the program is that it focuses on non-traditional teaching techniques and creative ways to spark the kids’ interests. The pairs work on all sorts of projects, including writing creatively, taking apart radios, reading, and working on computers. The goal is to try to find ways to integrate real life lessons about drug education, nutrition, and other topics while preparing them for the work world and helping them form a healthy relationship with an adult.

"A lot of these kids have been let down many times," Schoen explains. "So consistency is the key." Just showing up each week, rain or shine, crisis or norm, models responsibility and commitment to the kids. Many of the volunteers have been in the program for fifteen years. They have watched their kids grow up and then got to know a new crop.

Cabrini Connections can also use your help with the student magazine Wuzup! The students plan the topics and write the articles for the magazine, while volunteers guide and train the kids on layout, editing, the Internet, writing and revision, group work, and even with sales and advertising.

Connections also has a Spanish club, which focuses on language skills and culture, and a video club, in which kids write, film, and edit their own videos — and then show them in a video festival each year. For information on how to get involved, call Gena Schoen at 312-467-2889.

Give Them Shelter

If you’d like to help the homeless, the primo shelter is Deborah’s Place, a growing organization for women that houses an emergency shelter, transitional housing, SRO apartments, and a learning center for professional development. Deborah’s Place opened its doors to the homeless in 1985 with no paid staff, and volunteers still are an essential part of the shelter. This is where I volunteer and I love it.

Deborah’s Place is the only shelter I know of with a full-time art therapist who encourages the women to make clay sculptures, wall murals, jewelry, paintings, crocheting projects, and more. The women can also learn how to type, explore career options, receive one-on-one GED tutoring, get training in Internet basics, and win scholarships for schooling.

Kitchen volunteers come and cook the food provided or sometimes a group shows up and brings dinner, everything from homemade gourmet to take-out pizza. Volunteers may start by serving dinner or staying overnight but gradually many invent further ways to get involved.

The wonderful thing about Deborah’s Place is that it’s the house philosophy to accept women as they are — and this means participants and volunteers. It’s a nurturing and supportive spot where we can all come and do what we like, be ourselves, expand and explore creatively. Some volunteers build relationships with particular women; some bring food or bouquets of flowers; some offer professional services like massages, medical services, and yoga classes; some work on art projects with the women; some help the women write resumes and business letters; some help with the support groups. To volunteer, call 773-292-0707 and ask for Ann Potter or Mary Coy.

Animal Opportunities

At the Anti-Cruelty Society, volunteers are involved in all areas of animal service. They work in the adoption room, helping prospective adopters choose a pet, or they work with the veterinarians, helping with exams. Some volunteers care for the sick animals in the infirmary or bring healthy animals out to nursing homes and other health facilities for pet therapy. Volunteers bathe, walk, foster-parent, train, and love these little friends.

Jeff Gold, the volunteer manager, told me about star volunteer Joan Peterson, a former nurse in her seventies, who has been taking a mobile vaccinations van into poor inner-city areas and giving free vaccinations to pets every summer all summer for the past ten years. Gold says dedication like this is common. The volunteers get very attached to the animals and the shelter, sometimes staying on for fifteen years or more! To volunteer, call Jeff at 312-644-8338, extension 313.

Another great way to learn about animals and give back to the city is to become a docent at the Lincoln Park Zoo: a serious commitment with serious rewards. This intensive program begins each January with ten weeks of training, one full day per week. The volunteers-in-training learn first hand from the zoo-keepers about the zoo collection and the particular animals’ needs, behaviors, and environment. After the first ten weeks, volunteers begin six to seven months of on-the-job training. Volunteers-in-training are teamed up with other docents, and together, they learn and teach zoo visitors. Docents can work in the children’s zoo, the farm, or the main zoo. They help with small animal handling, give informal talks, help with education aids, give tours, lead activities with kids, work in the garden. It’s a perfect way to learn and help at the same time. Call Elizabeth Wheeler at 312-742-2124.

In the Service of Science

Volunteers at the Adler Planetarium also receive extensive training (read: free astronomy classes!); they’re asked to commit to six hours per month on a regular schedule. Volunteers lead demonstrations and activities for special events like comets and eclipses, show telescopes to the visitors, and teach kids at summer camp. Call the friendly Hannah Katz at 312-322-0514 if you’d like to find out more.

Summer Green

If you like feeling needed, then you should know that an endless number of environmental organizations need help this summer and through the year. If you’d like to learn more about the local environment as you volunteer, help out at the Cook County Forest Preserve. Volunteers there spend three hours to a whole day at a time on restoration and conservation projects such as collecting seeds, pulling weeds, planting, bird and butterfly monitoring, and brush cutting. You can be assigned to one of five different regions, depending on which is most convenient for you.

Joanne Fofteck works in the North Branch Restoration Group, the group in my region, the Northwest side. She told me her group works every Sunday and some Saturdays. A trained steward leads the workdays and provides all the supplies. "I was a city person who didn’t know much about native plants," she said. "I learned an enormous amount about the wildflowers and the native grasses and the ecology of the area. Plus, I made many dear friends," she told me. Call Joanne at 773-878-3877 if you’d like to volunteer at the North Branch.

Forest Preserve volunteers also help with the Mighty Acorns Project, through which school kids come out to the forest preserve and learn about ecology, nature, and preservation. Call Kristen at 630-257-6270.

Illinois Recycling would love some help with an upcoming education project. E-mail Kathleen Connors at ilrecycle@aol.com to get on her list of volunteers. And in the meantime, buy recycled!

If none of those options quite hit the spot, get in touch with the Chicagoland Environmental Network, an agency dedicated to helping people choose the organization they would like to volunteer for. CEN started six years ago with only thirty member organizations and has now grown to embrace over 250 organizations in and around Chicago. The volunteer programs all center around improving, educating about, and monitoring the environment. Volunteers are referred to programs that do prairie restoration; animal wildlife rehabilitation; recycling and waste clean-up; beach sweeps; urban gardening; river watch monitoring; and plant, butterfly, and bird counts. Volunteers can lead classes, or be interpreters, clerical staff, docents, and much more. Call up their web site at www.cen.nidus.net and browse. Or phone Laura Reilly, the CEN coordinator, at 708-485-0263 extension 396. You also can e-mail her at cen@nidus.com.

Commitment-free Caring

You love the idea of being a volunteer, but you’re not sure you’re ready to make an enormous commitment? Call Chicago Cares, a service organization that makes it easy for individuals and groups to volunteer. Every month, Chicago Cares comes up with ninety different community service projects in areas such as education, homelessness, hospitals, housing and renovation projects, elderly assistance, AIDS care projects, and tutoring. Volunteers receive a newsletter each month detailing all the projects happening in and around Chicago. You simply choose a project, call the contact person listed, and sign yourself up for one project at a time. In any given month, you can do as many projects as you like — or none at all.

Right now, Chicago Cares is working on a new GED program, an English conversation group for recently arrived Russian immigrants, pet therapy for seniors, nature walks with kids, cooking nutritious meals for women and children with AIDS, and painting a senior citizens’ residence home. To sign up for an orientation and get yourself on the newsletter list, call 312-669-0800.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether your goals are to meet people, help people, learn something, do something, or just to get out of your apartment for a few hours and think about something other than your credit card bill. What matters is that you take the time, make the call, and show up. Make the decision to focus outward, to have an effect on a cat, a child, a woman, a place, a world. Make your life extraordinary. Volunteer.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: