Going the Extra Mile

The school year is coming to a close, and many of our volunteers are packing it in for a few months...or for good. This has been a bit of a sad and frustrating time for me; volunteers that I supported for months and have developed genuine relationships with are suddenly abandoning me. I do understand why they're doing it. Summer is a busy time of year for most people, and when falls comes back around many people are going to be hesitant to recommit to a program that wrecks havoc on a tradiational 9-5 work schedule. The problem that I'm having is in the fact that it seems like my 10 months of hard work are slowly going down the drain. I suppose that I should think about all of this in terms of how many children were read to in the time that these volunteers were able to be in the classroom, but as someone who only gets to see the impact that the program makes from the inside of an office, that can be very difficult.

I would like to share a story that helped to brighten my attitude about my current situation, and has helped me to see the enormous impact that our volunteers have in just a few short months with the children.

Many of our reading sites had a graduation ceremony at the end of the school year, and several of them invited their volunteers to attend. At one of these sites, two women who had been reading for less than six months decided to show up and support the children they had been reading to for an hour each week. When they arrived, they were surprised to see undeniable proof of the impact that they had made in the children's lives. Some of the parents had been unable to attend the ceremony, and these volunteers (who were by now trusted role models in the lives of the children) were able to stand in where they could to ensure that the children with working parents felt loved and included. The site director was so pleased with this turn of events that she let us know what had happened just as soon as she could.