My husband volunteers at a fire department, and has for
years. Many of my friends volunteer for
various organizations, and one of my friends has been a foster parent for
years, so I was constantly around people who give of their time for some
greater good. I waned to volunteer for something
too. I believe it’s the right thing to
do; if everyone volunteered for something a lot of things would get done, and I
truly believe the world would be a better place.
My problem was in deciding what to volunteer for; I’m not
the most outgoing person, I’m not at all physically strong, I’m sort of prissy and don’t like to get
dirty, I don’t care for large crowds, I love quiet, and I didn’t want a huge
time commitment . But I thought surely
there was something out there that I could do to make a small difference without
wrecking my little world as I know it. So
began my saga of failed volunteer attempts.
I tried volunteering with a rape crisis center, but the
training program, which had to be completed in order to volunteer, was
essentially full time, which didn’t work with my full time job and long
commute. I considered (for about five
minutes) a children’s shelter, but I’m not good with kids, so I abandoned that
idea very quickly.
Next came my quest to find some sort of office work to do on
a volunteer basis. It’s what I do for a
living, so why not just add a few more hours a week for a good cause? That didn’t go so well either; many of the
places that I tried had paid office positions, and didn’t need volunteers for
them. Some places didn’t have enough
office work to need a volunteer. I
finally found a legal aid type place that I was very excited about, but I
quickly learned that the person in charge had a definite political agenda that
was very different from mine. So I
stopped volunteering there before I even made it out of training.
After my disappointing, and brief, stint as an office worker
volunteer I decided to try something more hands- on. I spent one Saturday morning freezing outside
the mall with a pet welfare group attempting to promote spaying and neutering,
definitely something I feel strongly about.
The methods, however, were not so much to my style and liking; the
posters and signs made many people (including myself) cry, and some of the
people were a little, let’s say, intense, for me. A good group to be sure, but definitely not
my niche.
Still going with the hands-on approach I next attempted an
animal shelter. I love animals, and had
heard great things about this one. I
went, and the experience wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t entirely what I was
looking for. The noise level in the
shelter was very intense (for a person who rarely even plays the car radio this
is a BIG deal) and the shelter is about 45 minutes from my house, so if I had
two hours to spare, only about 30 minutes would actually be spent
volunteering. I kept meaning to go back
there, but never found the time, or if I’m honest, the wherewithal to endure
the noise.
I began to wonder if there was something inherently wrong
with me that made it impossible for me to volunteer, some basic human kindness
gene that I was missing. Plenty of other
people manage to find the time to do something good, without complaining about
the noise, the commute, the time, or anything else.
Then a co-worker talked to me about animal transports. I had never heard of them before, but
basically a rescue group pulls animals from a high kill shelter and volunteer
coordinators arrange for volunteers to drive the animals wherever they need to
go. Many transports are on the weekend,
and are usually broken into one to two hour segments, or “legs”. This sounded promising!
I was a little hesitant to sign up at first; many of the
legs in my area involved driving to places I’d never been before, and I have a
terrible sense of direction. I have
literally gotten lost in revolving doors.
I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure driving around lost with some poor
dog qualified as “helping”. Then there
was a leg that involved picking animals up from a shelter near one of my
teenage hang-outs and driving them just a little past where I live now. This I could do!
I signed up for that transport on a Monday and anxiously
awaited my Saturday morning leg. The
transport coordinator was great about answering my questions.
In the meantime, I received another email about another
transport that needed just one leg filled,
to Tennessee. It was only about an hour
and a half drive, only an hour from where I would be dropping off the animals
from the first transport. My best
friend, who has a sense of direction that is like having GPS, agreed to go with
me if I signed up for the transport to Tennessee, and so I did.
The Friday afternoon and evening before the transports I
made contact with everyone I needed to; drivers on other end of both legs, the
transport coordinators, and one of the rescue groups. Everyone was very pleasant, and as the
communication was largely by email, it didn’t even disrupt our Friday night
plans.
Saturday was one of those beautiful, blue skies and puffy
clouds days where everything seems right in the world. The drive to the shelter was easy; it was a
drive I’d made literally hundreds of times, and all went well in picking up the
animals from the shelter. My friend and
I delivered all six animals (two dogs and four cats) to the next driver, and
were able to try a new restaurant while waiting for the next transport. The drive to Tennessee was absolutely
beautiful, and the two dogs from that trip were a lot of fun.
When my husband asked how it went, I knew I’d finally found
my niche. The trips were easy, the
people were all kind and pleasant to deal with, and the animals were precious;
driving them part of the way to a second chance at life was an amazing
feeling.
I have since signed up for more transports, usually the same
trip to Tennessee. I know how to get
there now, and am not so worried about directions. There are transports most weekends, so I seem
to be able to sign up as often as I’d like, and there’s no guilt tripping or
explanations needed on weekends when I’m not able to sign up for one. I've met some really amazing people and made some new friends. It’s not glamorous, and it’s not making a
huge impact (except, I like to hope, to the animals we drive and the families
who adopt them) on the world, but I have finally found my volunteer niche.
