Voulentering

Volunteering

Many people today have never and will never volunteer. Volunteering by definition is a person who acts of his own free will in a transaction. When people hear the word volunteer they ask, "Am I going to get paid?" Volunteering is something you do not for the money, but for self-satisfaction that you helped someone else. Any time someone helps another without being asked they are volunteering. Many people volunteer but inside they really wish they were out fishing or shopping, but I volunteer for the look on the child's face when he/she learns something new.

There are many different groups to volunteer with. One major group is the AmeriCorps. Each year, AmeriCorps has more than 40,000 members serve with programs in every state nation wide. Groups such as American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and Boys and Girls clubs are a few out of the thousand different programs that make up the AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps offers many different fields of volunteering from teaching kids how to read to building homes for low-income families. You do not have to be a part of the AmeriCorps to make a difference; there are other places such as PM Academy where you can change someone's life for the better.

One of our local volunteering sites is PM Academy. PM Academy is an after school program for kids in first through third grade that need extra help in math, reading, and writing. PM Academy was started to help kids in problem areas. The kids are split up into groups by their grade. Each group has two volunteers; one assumes the role of the teacher and the other helps individual students. This year PM Academy has a total of fifteen kids and 5 volunteers; this equals a ratio of one teacher to three kids, which allows the kids to have more of a one on one environment with the teacher. This is more personal attention than he/she would have in the classroom, giving them exactly what they need to get caught up.

My first experience with volunteering was chaos. I decided to volunteer for PM Academy because it was working with young kids. The first day I was a little nervous because I didn't know what to expect from the kids. I walked into the classroom and over to the corner of the room to introduce myself to Sue, the director of PM Academy. She told me that I would be working with the second grade students. She gave me a packet of worksheets for the kids to work on and pointed me to the table where my class would be sitting. Sue told me to go ahead and sit at my table and she would bring the students over. I was sitting