Ideas for Volunteering

Since we are a new chapter, we are looking at a lot of possibilities of ways to serve our community. Some volunteer opportunities that exist are: (Names in parentheses are those of information gatherers.)

  1. Drop In Center-(Kelly Chipemba)
    They need a group to cook and serve a meal for 200. 2nd Friday or 2nd/4th Sunday 6-9 Pm. We all felt overwhelmed by this amount of work. Kelly to contact the volunteer coordinator for more info. Michael Marcotte spoke with Pat Clifford about volunteering and he brought up the idea of our bringing meditation to the center. Michael will talk with him further.
  2. Tender Mercies -See web site for details of volunteer
    opportunities.
  3. FreestoreFoodbank (Mary Jo Holtmann).
    They need volunteers to distribute food/items weekdays 8-4 PM and sorting food/items on Saturday from 9-12 or 1-4. They do this in shifts of 20 but will let us do this even if we do not have 20 to help. They will put us with another group.
    Mary Jo to get us applications and then we will move forward in volunteering.
  4. Prison ministry-(Kathleen Matthews and Michael Marcotte).
    Kathleen Matthews invited Mary Ellen Landolina from the Tri-State Dharma sangha to come to speak to us on Feb. 3, 2008. Mary Ellen gave a very thorough, interesting and helpful description of the work that she and Pat Dolan (another Tri-State Dharma member) carried out at Lebanon Correctional Institution. They team taught meditation classes there for six years and just stopped in January of this year.
    Michael Marcotte also mentioned at an earlier meeting that he knew Gene Carmichael, a Jesuit priest at XU who is the Catholic Chaplain at Lebanon State Correctional Institution. Fr. Carmichael said he thought they would be very open to our setting up a meditation group there. He said they are in transition but the new warden and Chaplain director would be very open to us going up there.
  5. African Refugee children (Kathy) Kathy is setting up a monthly outing with a group of children of the families of refugees. They are 9-10 kids, aged 6-14. She will set up a monthly schedule and others of us could sign up to help. Some would donate $ to make the events free. We may need as many as 5 volunteers. This might be a time for our kids to get involved.