Volunteer Spotlight: Susie Marshall

I often get random requests from people wanting to volunteer with our education programs. Usually the requests are very specific. They want to come on a certain day (usually a weekend or an evening after we're closed) and during a certain time frame. Oftentimes, they want to bring a large group of people.

I truly appreciate a person's willingness to give of their time, but I struggle to try to reconcile a group or individual's willingness to give of their time (working around their work schedules) with our actual need. There has got to be some way to engage people in volunteering without making our staff work 50 hours a week to accommodate them. There has also got to be a way to engage volunteers in a way that is beneficial to the program instead of just busy-work that is created because non-profits feel the need to cater to volunteers.

The consistent and genuinely engaged volunteer is very rare and hard to come by but they are possible. We have a couple of them.

Today, I want to spotlight Susie Marshall as one of those people.

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Susie works with the Gleaning Network of Texas. She helped our After-School Academy get their garden started this summer. Her original commitment was to teach a garden/environment class one Friday a month last school year. But she took it upon herself to visit us more than that. Susie would stop by every so--in between meetings or if she was down the street for some reason--often just to say hi or to check out something for the class she was going to be teaching. Because she was so consistent, we convinced her back in the summer to help the kids to start a garden.

Due to different obstacles here and there, we couldn't start the garden when we wanted to. Many people would have stopped coming. But that didn't stop Susie. She kept coming. She hung out. She got to know the kids better. She assisted some teachers and sat in on some classes. She became a part of our program, despite there being "nothing" for her to do.

By the time we got approval for the garden, Susie was ready...because she never went away. Since we were behind in the process, she recruited different people to help. She ran into more obstacles (the ground was too hard). She did more research. She decided on a "lasagna garden." Since the process was too big for small kids, she recruited a group of teenagers to work with the kids.

We could have set aside our project and waited for a volunteer group to come along, but we needed to get the garden going so that vegetables could grow and so that the kids could work in it. And we didn't want it done *by* somebody, we wanted it done *with* the kids. Susie knew all of that and was quick to accommodate--even gathering and purchasing the supplies needed.

Because we had a long time relationship/partnership with Susie, she didn't need a lot of nurturing. We didn't have to provide a staff member to supervise her and her group on a Saturday because she was very familiar with us, the garden, the kids, and our expectations. Susie's volunteering efforts didn't (and don't) take time away from what we spend with the kids, they enhance them.

The garden now has green peppers, red tomatoes, and ripe black-eyed peas and jalepenos. Susie is still researching new practices and has become a part of our summer planning committee. Our After-School Academy is doing some great things with the help of volunteers like Susie.

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If you are someone who wants to be involved, offer your time. Stop in on your lunch break and be willing to enter data or shelve books. Get to know the program's day-to-day activities and needs when kids and big events *aren't* happening. We have to have staff to run our programs like everyone else. Our kids deserve that. But in preparing for our programs, we don't always have time to get the behind-the-scenes things done. Help us with those behind the scenes things...or just show up regularly so that we know we can call on you when we need something. And we need those kinds of volunteers beyond Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Hope for the New Year

Last year I "resolved" to have wishes instead of creating ambiguous resolutions that last for a day. This year, I still refuse to create a resolution I probably won't keep. But I will go one step beyond wishes. As we enter a new year, I have new hope.

Everything around me seems to be leaning toward coming together--listening to each other...learning from each other...accepting each other for who they are...and challenging each other to move beyond.

On January 20, we will have a president who has lived in different countries and whose skin color has caused him to experience life in the United States differently than any president who has gone before him. His presence has brought out hatred and evil from some. His assumed political views have created excitement and frustration from both sides. His religious associations have caused people to question him from the "right" and the "left." ...but his unifying talk and consequential actions are demonstrating a much longer term vision for bringing people together.

I find it interesting that the state of our nation is also causing people to become interested in other cultures and countries besides "America." Several friends (including myself) have expressed a desire to know more about the people and the culture of the areas where our friends and family are engaged in a war and are, thus, reading more and paying a little more attention to international news. There seems to be a desire to understand more about the middle eastern cultures and are finding out what life is like for other people in other countries and of religions other than Christian. It seems we are beginning to notice that our Iraqi, Muslim, Indian, Pakistani, Shia, Sunni neighbors exist here in the United States.

The other day I watched a documentary called Beyond our Differences.



As I listened to people of various religions, cultures, and ethnicities speak, I was inspired yet again with a sense of hope for our new year. In the documentary, Desmond Tutu quoted the Prayer of Saint Francis:

Oh Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

I remember singing a song like this in college...however, I remember that when I sang it, I thought about it as an action, something I could do for others, and not an application to my own life. In my religious upbringing, I was taught that I could take peace to someone else--the destitute people in Africa...the poor people in the inner city...the down and out in disaster areas. In my mind, it was "them" who needed me to teach them more about peace. I knew I was qualified because I didn't fight or intentionally harm people. I didn't think the song applied to me personally. It never occurred to me that there were ways I could change my own life to better embody that peace.

I never thought the true spiritual role and responsibility to carry peace within would be to make myself conscious of words that could be racially offensive, to educate myself about laws that disproportionately hurt people who are poor, to listen to people's stories of injustice, and to work with people to change that injustice.

This year I have hope that many more people will join on the path of seeing, understanding, and appreciating differences...and then going beyond them. I look forward to that in 2009.

Who does "doing good" benefit?

Ever look around and wonder how the people around you have so much and wonder why you have so little?

People always seem to have enough money to eat out, buy name brand clothing, have a cell phone, go to the movies, give their kids everything they ever wanted, and give their friends nice gifts. I can't figure it out. I'm a single person with no children. My frivilous expenses consist of the minimal cable package, Starbucks once or twice a month, and a few books from 1/2 price books. Yet, those "frivilous" expenses and my basic bills pretty much consume my entire paycheck.

So, how do other people do it?

From what I have finally figured out about some of my friends, there's a simple answer...credit and bad debts. Or in the "best" situation, they make credit cards payments each month (to the tune of 19% interest or more) or they have payday loans or buy at places like Rent-a-Center (to the tune of 40-500% interest...don't believe me?? I didn't either until I checked it out myself.)

I admit, sometimes I envy people who go out to eat every night and don't have to cook. I envy people who have someone come clean their house and take care of their yard. I have twinges of jealousy when people get bi-weekly pedicure massages.

The bottom line, though, is that many people are caught up in our culture of keeping up with the Jones's. Unfortunately, as we're trying to keep up with the Jones's, what we don't realize is that the Jones's are buying everything on credit and digging themselves deeper every day by paying sky high interest rates...all the while, their monthly income stays the same.

Our desire to have what everyone else has...to live the life everyone else does...keeps many people from ever getting ahead...and these days I'm feeling like I contributed to it.

Over the years I have a long list of bad loans I've made that were never repaid. In my mind, I was doing the "Christian thing" by lending people money. As I have begun to understand more about sub-prime mortgages, predatory lenders, payday loans, and credit, I'm beginning to think that my "good heart" and "good intentions" actually hurt the people I intended to help. Hmmm...I wonder if "good intentions" are actually un-Christian because they benefit me rather than the recipient??

Perhaps if I would've said "no" to some people over the years the person would've had to think about figuring how to stay within the limits of what they already had. Yes, it's true that many people have jobs that don't pay them a livable wage. Then again, some people don't have jobs (and aren't trying). By lending them money that they don't have, doesn't that create a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation for them *if* they choose to pay me back?

I am amazed at how some people juggle their bills on the limited money they make. However, I also recognize that within whatever salary we make, we all have "extras" that we could do without--caller ID, cable, Starbucks, iPods, etc.

Finances are tricky. Everyone wants to keep theirs secret. My personal opinion is that we need to get financial literacy and general business classes into the high schools. But, until that happens, maybe the best strategy (rather than loaning people money they can't return) is to work with banks and non-profits to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities available for all kinds of financial literacy classes. Maybe these could be a start:

• Balancing a checkbook and creating a budget


• Saving up instead of paying out (to rent-a-center and payday loans and such)


• Planning for retirement


• Considering purchasing a car or a home?...don’t forget about the extra expenses that go along with it


• Planning for my child’s college education…the best way to save and receive financial aid


• Understanding the college loan process


• Beginning the process of cleaning up my credit