I want to preface this column by saying I love to volunteer.<\/p>\n
I hate being forced to volunteer. However, I think that is what the world is coming to now.<\/p>\n
If your child plays any type of sport, you know that you have to volunteer. At the beginning of the season, you are likely told to give a post-dated cheque, and if you don’t put in your required volunteer hours, that cheque will be cashed.<\/p>\n
One of my daughters is interested in trying a new sport, and we were looking around to see what piqued her interest. One of the things I was looking at is what are the parent volunteer requirements.<\/p>\n
Some sports require too much, or some things don’t interest me, and I know there won’t be any joy in my giving. We all have different talents and can bring different things to the table, but sometimes we are forced to do things we either can’t do or aren’t able to do with any passion.<\/p>\n
Last year, I had to contribute something to a bake sale. I am not a great baker. I bought frozen cookie dough and tried to wrap it nicely, but I am also not overly creative when it comes to wrapping.<\/p>\n
It looked (and probably tasted) not very good. I never want to stop my kids from doing something they want to try, such as soccer or hockey, and I hate that I even inquire about the volunteer requirements.<\/p>\n
I would never not sign them up, but maybe I would slightly push them toward something else? I am not even sure. I just know that I want to do things with joy in my heart.<\/p>\n
Having said all that. I know that so much work goes into organizing sports. Setting up registrations, finding ice time or pool space, or fields is not easy. Taking care of the financial side of organizations is way over my head.<\/p>\n
I sit on the board of one sports organization in town, and I know firsthand, it takes a village. Things don’t magically fall into place. There is an incredible amount of work that goes on behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
It is sad that we have to force parents to show up. Of course, there are a lot of people willing to put in the time, but there are so many who don’t. And it forces organizations to put mandatory volunteer requirements.<\/p>\n
This also means there has to be a volunteer to wrangle the volunteers. It is almost a full-time position to find, monitor and organize people.<\/p>\n
If everyone would just show up, find something they want to help with, everything would run a lot more smoothly. When people are passionate about things, it isn’t work.<\/p>\n
No one wants to be forced to do anything. And trust me, no one wants to force you.<\/p>\n
Find something you enjoy helping with and raise your hand. If more people would volunteer for things they enjoy doing, there would be a lot less grumbling from people being forced to do things they don’t enjoy.<\/p>\n
It has been said, "if you want something done, give it to a busy person." I’ve seen it firsthand. It is always the same people volunteering.<\/p>\n
We need less busy people to step up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marisca encourages everybody to step up to the plate for a better community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":158145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,21,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-community","category-opinion"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n