Doing Your Part

It’s that time of year again when people remember to give time and/or treasure to their favorite charities. It’s an important obligation to our communities that we should all seek to fill.

This has me thinking about the volunteer work my family has done over the years. In addition to making one feel good, donating time to a cause also reaps other benefits: working on lots of interesting projects, meeting new people, training in a new discipline, and fostering new communities.

Over the years, I have given my time to many worthy causes.  I volunteered as a Girl Scout Leader for over a decade. In addition to exposing my daughter and the other girls to new and fun things, we made sure to remember other folks each year. Our troop made blankets for victims of Hurricane Katrina, gathered and donated supplies for a pet shelter, collected and shipped shoes to disadvantaged persons in Uruguay, raised money for the family of a child with cancer, and more.  Each year, I would look to focus the girls’ efforts on causes to which they could relate.  It was a great experience – they were always happy to help. Along similar lines, my husband Rob was a Boy Scout scoutmaster for my son’s troops and was always working on a project or an event.

In addition to scouting, I am a member of the Junior League.  Let me put my plug in for that organization right here and right now.  That train runs like clockwork. Each year, a completely new board gets elected, projects get chosen, jobs get done. Really quite an impressive machine.  Since my active tenure there, I have often cited examples of how well things are run. Anyway, in the League we took on big, heavily publicized projects like running Dental Day (a fair with lots of fun stuff, but also dentists who would screen children, for free, whose parents could not afford to take them to the dentist), to making weekly meals for a local soup kitchen, to teaching art classes to adults on the spectrum.  It was all very gratifying work which required learning new skills outside of one’s profession.

I have also volunteered for my alma mater – Cornell University.  Currently, I am serving on a committee that stresses the benefits of connection in the community – alums, students, and the university. But I have to say, the longest running volunteer effort definitely goes to Rob.  He has volunteered for Cornell University for over 35 years!  He has served on boards and been on many committees throughout the years.  One of his most recent favorite projects has been to be part of the team that put the alumni magazine online. No small feat!

I am also proud to say that, as a result of his many years of volunteer work, Rob was one of the 2024 recipients of the FHTR Award for Volunteer Service.  I am attaching the link here so you can see his awesome acceptance speech (as well as some hilarious photos from the ’80s).  Go Rob and go Big Red!

Thanks for reading!

Eve