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by Michele Ober

A year ago, a volunteer inquiry came across my desk with name, contact information, and interest in three different areas in the organization. I proceeded to contact the volunteer leaders of each area asking that they send welcome emails and invitations to join their committees/projects. Within four months, the volunteer had experiences in each of those three areas and he proceeded to get involved in a couple more as he felt his professional skills and talents could be beneficial. At that four-month mark, a volunteer survey was completed at which time he commented on the lack of knowledge of his capabilities provided to the volunteer leaders, the lack of work in one area, and the overall lack of communication and appreciation. In one area, he stated that he “took the initiative to get things moving.”

After seven months, the volunteer had resigned from the original three areas in which he expressed his initial interests and was becoming active in three other areas. He was able to complete short-term projects in two areas but, in the third area, he felt progress in ongoing projects was not forthcoming. This past week, after little/no communication between the volunteer leaders and the volunteer, an email came to me which stated his grievances and his final goodbye.

After contemplating this volunteer’s experience over this past year, I became so much more aware of the need to truly engage volunteers, not just manage them. I referred to “Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow“, by Jill Friedman Fixler and Sandie Eichberg, with Gail Lorenz, CVA. I concentrated on the chapter entitled “Nurturing the Relationship” and especially Friedman Fixler’s tool, the Individual Volunteer Plan (IVP). While she states this tool is not for everyone, I think it would have been appropriate for this volunteer. “For the Boomer who wants meaningful work with definable impact, an IVP can be written to promise increasing impact over the volunteer’s career… an IVP may offer a future of professional development and increased responsibility.” For this volunteer, the most important opportunity that the IVP could create is “new possibilities for those who have a terrific volunteer history but seem to be losing interest, decreasing commitment, or verging on problematic behavior.”

The basic structure of an IVP is that a supervisor or support liaison and the volunteer meet. Together they discuss current competencies (which may include communication, team building, collaboration, and technology), goals and benchmarks to improve skills, competencies, or experiences as well as project planning (which may include vision, resources, training, and additional needs), and updates to review progress and to revise the plan as needed. Lastly, it is advised to keep lines of communication open especially to check in on progress.

As I transition from a volunteer coordinator to a volunteer engagement professional, I will continue to look at strategies to support the volunteer’s “desire for autonomy, authority, impact, and opportunities to be creative and innovative.” Had a proper plan for engagement been in practice, this volunteer certainly could have added value to the organization and could have felt successful and appreciated.

Michele Ober is the Volunteer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity / 7 Rivers Maine. She is a guest blogger.

by Michael A. Aiguier

Sometimes a volunteer manager will find themselves with the fortunate situation of having an over abundance of people willing to help out in their organization. In this situation, it can be tempting to throw one’s hands up and just send people home with no clear reason as to why, or, if they have not arrived for an opportunity, not giving them a call. Both of these situations can lead to hurt feelings and the high likelihood that when you do need them, they will not be there.

So, how does one avoid these situations? Finding other organizations that have similar ends and are much needier than you is a good start. If you can build a standing relationship with one or a few other groups that also need volunteers on short notice, you can build good will by sending overflow to them and allowing your volunteers to participate in organizations with similar goals as they have.

Always having a back-up project is another way to help ensure satisfaction with your volunteer program. Have staff add ideas to a “project bank” that volunteers can withdraw from when they come in. You should also encourage your volunteers to suggest ideas for projects that they or others with the right skill set can do. Sometimes it is easier for some one doing volunteer work to see where a program can be improved with just a little more people power.

Designing projects in such a way as to have them easily broken down into teams, and to have those teams broken easily into further groups is another effective way of managing overflow. You automatically have created new volunteer positions (team leaders), and found a way to distribute new volunteers (as they come in you can assign them to one of the current teams).

So, when you have advertised your event or position so well that you have an overwhelming response, do not despair. Be thankful, and reward the interest in your organization with new and on-going opportunities.

Michael Aiguier is an AmeriCorps VISTA with the VolunteerMaine Project serving at the United Way of Eastern Maine. He is a featured blogger.

by Sarah Ryan, Ph.D.

Summertime represents a shift in gears for most nonprofits. Youth organizations fill more hours each day with programming, legal organizations prepare for fresh sessions of autumnal judicial fact-finding, and a lucky handful of public sector employees take vacations, or at least silence their Blackberries for a few hours each Friday. Throughout the sun-drenched U.S. nonprofit sector, emerging professionals attempt to be helpful while building their resumes. It’s that time of year again – high season for college interns.

In the early 2000s, I struggled to manage gaggles of well-meaning do-gooders commuting from their dorm rooms at Columbia and New York University. Today, as a faculty member, I prepare young people with big hearts and dreams (and a sometimes-Machiavellian obsession with their resumes) for summer internships. Working with soon-to-be college interns, I have learned a great deal about how they approach these opportunities. Although my students bring a wide array of talents to the table, they seem to share at least three assumptions about internships:

Assumption 1: Interns add greatly to organizations without costing anything Recently, one of my students decided to seek an internship in New York City. Another student encouraged her, effusing: “There are lots of internships. Everyone wants interns. We work hard and don’t cost anything!” In that moment, I realized that students have no idea how much work it takes to train or manage them. They see the value that they add – rightfully – without recognizing the overhead they exact. I discovered the same phenomenon when employing graduate research assistants. My RAs had to clock a certain number of hours per week or month regardless of my work flow. During lulls, I arrived at work early to create projects for them to do; during high times I did some of their work for them because I had no extra money to pay for overtime. In the end, I discovered that research assistantships often benefit students more than faculty mentors, just like internships. (And students don’t realize this.)

Assumption 2: “In this economy…” organizations need free labor My students maintain grim estimations of their post-college job opportunities. “In this economy…” they sigh, “There is almost no hope for someone with a Liberal Arts degree, or Business degree, or any other sort of 4-year degree.” “Organizations aren’t hiring,” they opine, “They’re getting the work done for free.” This is especially true in the public sector, they figure. Many of my students see the public sector as a sinking ship that needs bailers. They see themselves as wielding buckets and pitching in to save organizations when they need it most. And with that almost-righteous view of their contribution, they expect organizations to offer high praise, flexible working hours, and interesting work. After all, beggars can’t be choosers, and “in this economy” nonprofits are begging for free labor rather than hiring recent college graduates.

Assumption 3: Organizations are like living textbooks with expert managers/teachers at the helm Although many of my students have work experience, they still view their internship sites as romanticized case studies, ripped from the “best practices” pages of textbooks. In their imaginations, professional managers orchestrate incredibly complex organizations in nuanced and theoretically-driven ways that suggest clear roles and learning outcomes for incoming team members. In short, students approach internships the way they approach classes. They expect an expert to lead them through a series of increasingly complex tasks that will result in both the betterment of the organization and the intern-learner: a textbook win-win situation. Some students are shocked to discover that organizations are chaotic, roles and tasks are in transition, and there is no syllabus-type document outlining the major activities, expectations, or take-aways for their internships.

So, students assume that they are greatly needed, no-cost contributors to the bottom line of a highly-functioning but under-resourced enterprise run by geniuses. Knowing this, mentors/supervisors can better manage their interns by employing three strategies.

Strategy 1: Develop a comprehensive internship orientation program for the organization or a consortium of organizations Rather than having each supervisor conduct individual orientation and training sessions with each intern each summer, develop a broad-based training program for the entire organization, or – better yet – a consortium of organizations. The orientation should cover a range of topics from professional comportment to specific job skills. It should include goal-setting sessions that emphasize the role of interns in managing their own learning processes. The orientation should include team-building activities that encourage interns to form a community among themselves and begin to see each other as sources of information (i.e., as opposed to the mentor as the source of all answers to all questions). Finally, the orientation should serve to transition students from a classroom setting to a team-building setting to a professional setting.

Strategy 2: Create summer-length “filler” projects for interns to complete during their downtime At times, interns will not have enough work to do. Wanting to remain busy and useful at all times, they will typically approach their supervisors for “more work.” These requests often come at inopportune moments, when supervisors are consumed with pressing projects and deliverables and are unable to articulate specific tasks and provide on-the-spot training. The potential for both sides to be frustrated in these moments is quite high. “Filler” projects can provide interns with a sense of continuity and supervisors with a much needed respite from teaching. Research projects can be especially useful “fillers” because they leverage students’ existing skills and provide organizations with useful information. One of my colleagues had her intern research all U.S.-based conventions and conferences related to the organization’s work. The student delivered a year-long calendar of events that is still updated by the staff. Another colleague had interns research all of the competing organizations in his field. His nonprofit uses that document to prepare portions of grant proposals (e.g., that describe the NGO’s niche). Both colleagues encouraged their interns to return to these and other large-scale endeavors whenever they found themselves idle (i.e., rather than asking for “more work”).

Strategy 3: Praise your interns
Despite some misguided assumptions and unreasonable needs, my students are admirably committed to adding value to the world through their contributions to organizations and causes that they care about. In my classroom, they are open, thoughtful, and compassionate. They harbor big dreams about a more just society. They want to belong, they long to matter, and they believe that their internships are their contributions to social justice. In talking with them about their summer plans, I hear again and again that they are going off to do good things. I witness a longing for challenges, successes, and approval from professionals that seem to have it all together. When they read me their cover letters, they stretch out the names of executive directors and program officers and internship supervisors – people they long to emulate. And then they head off to their internships, full of starry-eyed admiration for their mentors, the people changing the world. They believe their mentors need them, they hope they will be appreciated.

And in the end, despite all that they might ask for, my students really want only one thing – praise.

Sarah Ryan, Ph.D., is from the Department of Communication at The University of Texas at El Paso and is a featured blogger.

by Keri Penick

Have you ever heard of the nationwide program Plant-A-Row (PAR)? Most people are able to exclaim- “Oh, I’ve heard about that!” Commonly, people do understand it is a public service campaign to encourage home gardeners to grow more vegetables and fruits and donate any excess to local food pantries. Most understand it is a great idea, but can be puzzled as to what it really entails.

The beginning of May saw the launch of the 2010 Kennebec Plant-A-Row Challenge, after weeks of planning and building excitement among volunteers, including UMaine Cooperative Extension Staff, Master Gardener Volunteers, and community members who are behind local efforts for this program. This “Challenge” is to provide at least 12,000 pounds of fresh produce to food pantries in the Kennebec County area.

A great incentive for interested volunteers to sign up now is to receive support, connect with the gardening community, and to eliminate pantries from becoming overburdened. But with busy lives, we all understand the regret that can come from hearing about great ideas such as PAR, but becoming unable to join the effort. Of course, the biggest reason that may keep people from volunteering is limited time. The second reason, however, is one that may be overlooked but can easily be addressed to increase participation- fixing the disconnect between volunteers wanting to help and not knowing exactly what they can do!

The Kennebec PAR Planning Committee is addressing this challenge in several ways, including:
• Public Outreach: Distribution of information to nurseries, greenhouses, health food stores, farmers’ markets, and libraries
• Identifying Resources: Using excitement, talent, and connections from volunteers themselves for such distribution and to create hand-drawn logos and tee-shirt designs
• Providing Support: Welcoming participants to the program and giving specific instructions for donating to pantries
• Creating a Coaching Model: Implementing volunteers to serve as local coordinators for PAR participants in their area, increasing connection and underlining the power of relationships
• Offering Opportunities: Inclusive to those without a garden, for example:
 Giving a helping hand to local community gardens already growing for food pantry donation,
 Serving a food pantry or soup kitchen based on their individual needs: contributing time, transportation of food, or even donating containers.

By filling out an enrollment form, a volunteer can be encouraged to find an opportunity that works for them and the community, in whatever capacity they may offer. Enrolling in the PAR program connects the gardener with other volunteers also committed to improving the local food economy, as well as providing an outlet of communication for horticulture advice.

UMaine Cooperative Extension and Master Gardener Volunteers are excited about gardening, and with dedicated food pantry and soup kitchen volunteers—are also passionate about helping the community. The 2010 Kennebec Plant-A-Row Challenge combines such efforts. Join us today—and many thanks to those who already have!

Please visit our website for more information, including an online enrollment form.

Keri Penick is an AmeriCorps*VISTA with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Kennebec County and is a guest blogger.

by Jamie Andrew

For those of you who don’t know, PAVA is a beautiful thing. PAVA stands for Portland Area Volunteer Administrators, and we meet once a month at different organizations throughout Portland. Not only are there muffins and coffee (!), there is always a truly wonderful group of people willing to bounce ideas, thoughts, and questions off of each other. The value of this can’t be underestimated – especially because, as Volunteer Coordinators, we’re often flying solo in our organizations. Most non-profits barely have money for one Volunteer Coordinator, let alone two. So who do we gripe about unreliable volunteers with? Brainstorm about retention with? My co-workers appreciate volunteers, but they’re not always wildly excited to discuss background checks (for which I don’t blame them).

So at a recent PAVA meeting, we did some group work, analyzing different statistics about volunteers from the past five years or so. Our group got into an insightful conversation about the roots of lots of issues we deal with – recruitment, training, management, retention – that I think is important for every Volunteer Coordinator (and employee who works with volunteers, for that matter) to think about. We know our organizations have and appreciate volunteers, but have you ever asked your staff: Why Volunteers? No, like, really – why volunteers? Chances are, the reasons your organization has volunteers runs deeper than having an occasional stapler, envelope stuffer, or tree-planter. The time and planning that goes into having volunteers is a huge investment, one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Does the staff of your organization understand this? If you can, consider an all-staff meeting involving a group discussion about volunteers, asking why you even have them in the first place.

We are operating in trying economic times, and most non-profits are seeking ways to expand capacity while cutting budgets simultaneously. (Somewhat counterintuitive, no?) Think about what volunteers have to offer if we take the time to thoughtfully integrate them into all aspects of our organizations. Not just the copying, the cleaning, and the odd projects here and there – but getting to know them individually for their personality, skill sets, their passions. Match them with jobs that suit them, meaningful tasks that allow employees to take on bigger projects. Imagine the load that could be lifted off of our over-worked staff! Everyone needs to be on board, though, or it won’t work. So consider starting by asking everyone a simple question: Why Volunteers?

Jamie Andrew is the Visitor Guide / Volunteer Coordinator at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine and is a featured blogger.

by Sarah Rhyan

Last semester, one of my students brought me an all-too-familiar problem. As a leader of her son’s P.T.A. she was frustrated with the low parental turnout at meetings and P.T.A.-sponsored events. She asked what she should do.

I offered the following advice:

When I ran a debate program in the South Bronx, getting parents to visit was the toughest part of my job. One year, I offered $100 worth of office supplies to the debate team that brought the most parents to the program’s annual open house. The winning school enticed two parents to attend. They were the only two that showed up. Over time I learned why parents don’t participate and how nonprofit leaders and volunteers can cope.

Why don’t parents participate?

Over the years, I discovered that well-intentioned parents still miss P.T.A. meetings, open houses, and the like for two reasons. First, parents opt out because they can’t find the time, not because they don’t care. Even non-working parents are balancing doctor visits, house-cleaning, shopping, etc. The particular date or time selected for a meeting might coincide with soccer practice, a visiting aunt, and the like. Today’s parents are busier than ever and they simply cannot attend every event. Second, parents are asked to attend all sorts of meetings, and most of them are a waste of time. Moms, dads, grandparents, and other legal guardians meet with doctors, social workers, pastors, nutritionists, teachers, etc. They show up to these meetings to demonstrate that they care about their kids. Many of these meetings are disorganized, irrelevant, unpleasant, and offer parents little in the way of help. Well-meaning administrators across the public sector organize face-to-face meetings when they’re not really necessary. Parents cannot tell the difference between a legitimate meeting and a waste of time from the flyers brought home by their children.

What can nonprofit leaders and volunteers do in the face of parental absence?

Nonprofit staffers – especially volunteers and unpaid community leaders like my student – can approach the situation using some or all of the following five strategies:

Strategy 1 - Only convene meetings when there is a true need for face-to-face decision-making, etc. For everything else, use e-mail, paper (e.g., take-home handouts), etc.

Strategy 2 - Plan a clear agenda and communicate it with parents well in advance so that they know the topic of the meeting, the goals for the meeting, and why their participation matters.

Strategy 3 - Organize, organize, organize… so that you can run the most efficient meeting possible. A thirty-minute meeting is ideal for busy parents.

Strategy 4 - Schedule the meeting at a time that works for working (and non-working) families (e.g., 4:30pm). If possible, provide an extra benefit such as free dinner. Remember, in the world of busy parenting, a 30-minute meeting accompanied by dinner for the family might actually save time (e.g., no dishes to wash).

Strategy 5 - Be happy with quality, rather than quantity. A dedicated team of 5 parents willing to meet monthly will achieve more for most organizations than a loose grouping of 20 parents willing to meet once a year.

Sarah Rhyan, Ph.D., is from the Department of Communication at The University of Texas at El Paso and is a featured blogger.

By Noble Smith

Having spent nearly fifty years in the business of working with and for volunteers at non-profit organizations does not make me an expert at anything. However, one aspect of serving as a volunteer that I have carried into my professional life has been the trait or characteristic that governs a successful volunteer experience.

I have seen these experiences especially over the last twenty years being a volunteer at a number of organizations and as a member of various commissions, task forces and quasi-governmental agencies - make darn sure that the volunteer has a clear understanding of what is required, that the task is well-structured, well supervised and that it fits into a total integrated framework of the non-profit.

Today’s non-profits now have a plethora of baby boomers who are (or shortly will be) descending by volunteering their professional and personal skills, time and commitment and as the masses increase, non-profits best hone and fine-tune their enlistment, training and management skills. As we are observing, baby boomers are better educated, healthier, have less free time, and high levels of work experience that perhaps the previous generation. Non-profits better be in top-notch shape to handle this growing influx.

Cited below are the most frequently stated observations by both volunteers and those who run the non-profits that I have experienced as a volunteer, a development staffer and as a consultant. (The reader will certainly have many other valued observations and recommendations.)

What are you as a volunteer looking for in volunteer opportunities?

Clear job descriptions of what is expected;
Matching my life experiences with the task assigned;
Responsibility with authority, although all volunteers must recognize that they are working, as in business, for others, others who must possess and execute clearly visible leadership traits;
A genuine pat on the back for a job well done (or a constructive overview where improvement can be made);
Follow-up reports on the effectiveness of the volunteer effort.

What attracts the volunteer in the search for opportunities?

Well-organized volunteer program;
Good volunteer management supervision;
Organizations that dovetail with my personal interest/skills;
Recognition;
Timeliness of task and its functionality;
Impact that volunteers have on reaching the vision, mission and core values of the organization.

What do volunteer managers need to know about working with older volunteers?

Know the volunteer’s life experience and match accordingly;
Know exactly what you want the volunteer to undertake and accomplish;
Provide appropriate and realistic training;
Treat volunteers as though they were your parents;
Listen carefully to the volunteers 4 Cs - comments, concerns, compliants and compliments;
Provide personal follow-up, and visible recognition;
Know how to discharge, relieve a volunteer who is in the wrong place, wrong task and at the wrong time.

We all need to keep firmly in our minds, whether we are the organization or the volunteer, that in equivalent payroll, volunteers are indispensable to our society. They are a commodity that merit’s our highest degree of quality care, a solid business-like approach to their involvement and, most importantly, treat them like your parents - they certainly qualify!

Noble Smith is a former Commissioner, President of Noble Smith Associates (Development and Marketing Consultants) and a featured blogger.

By Pete Phair

I have a couple of good friends who spend many weekends every year maintaining their respective sections of the Appalachian Trail. Another just received a coveted Volunteer of the Year Award from an organization she has done some fantastic work for. My friend Bo drives for hours to manage ski races all over the Northeast and my brother, God Bless him, travels all over the world as a volunteer for a group that accredits high schools. Just this past year alone, I volunteered for six different organizations between January and December. Look around you- you are surrounded by volunteers whether you realize it or not. And it seems that just about every one of them has a different reason for volunteering.

Part of my job requires that I try to figure out what compels people to volunteer. Why, for instance, would someone raising three young children, working forty plus hours each week and trying to maintain a semblance of a personal life want to give up a Saturday afternoon to stand behind a table for four hours? Why would someone offer their lunch hour two days a week to work on menial tasks that aren’t theirs to own? Why would a young woman trying to find employment in this current economy spend nearly an entire day each week as a volunteer in our office?

Some answers are straight forward- volunteering looks good on a resume`, it gets one out of the house and in some cases, volunteering helps to keep skill sets fresh. There are some volunteer scenarios that may result in personal perks while still others address intrinsic rewards we all need to feel good about ourselves. I suspect however, that there are a lot of underlying reasons that are not as obvious. Knowing those reasons should be able to help me with my recruiting efforts. But to find relevant answers to these questions, it seems I had to first ask – what are the reasons I volunteer?

Here’s what I came up with…
• Generally, I believe in the cause- passionately. Enough to drive me to action.
• Ultimately, the things I volunteer to do, better the lives of someone some way.
• Because it’s fun. Period.
• Volunteering helps me to feel less self-involved.
• I feel like I’m giving back to something.
• It involves me in a greater community.
• I get to meet new people.
• I want my daughter to see that volunteering is part of who we are as a family.
• It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
• I am part of a team working toward a common goal.
• I get to share my skills when I volunteer but just as important, sometimes I get to just do what I am told and not have to troubleshoot or make any decisions!

Let’s not forget that the reasons why people do not volunteer should be considered in our thinking too. Transportation, childcare and availability all play into the equation but so does philosophical alignment. A lot of our volunteers initially approach me to volunteer for WinterKids because they love to ski. That’s great but we do not necessarily need volunteers who ski. We need folks who want kids to get outside and be active in the winter time. Conversely, people who do not ski, or who are not active in the wintery outdoors, feel they have nothing to offer WinterKids. Au contraire! That’s why perception is another element in whether a program successfully recruits volunteers or not. Although your needs may be obvious to you and your co-workers, it may not always seem that way to potential volunteers
I suppose it all boils down to good matches. What would Abbott have been without Costello? Lewis without Clark? Sonny without Cher? Who can really say? But knowing how your organization’s volunteer needs match up with the audience you draw from is crucial to sustaining a successful program.
Thankfully, 110 people felt aligned enough with WinterKids to provide over 900 hours of volunteer service since last June. Without them, we would not have been able to do the work we do and whatever their reasons are for helping us, I am thankful and proud that they choose WinterKids as a volunteer opportunity. In a word, they are the Milli to our Vanilli…

Pete Phair is Outreach Coordinator at WinterKids and a featured blogger.

by Ann Swain

In all parts of our world, there are many people with the greatest desire to offer their expertise in a volunteer capacity. In preparing for retirement, I often ask the prospective retiree, ‘do you have a plan?’ If they don’t indicate a plan for their retirement, I will always suggest volunteering. However, there is a population in our world who may not have expertise in any particular area, but they truly have heart. They want to give back, but they don’t even know what to give back or how.

Our expectations of the ‘ideal volunteer’ may need to be rewritten. Our expectations may in fact, not be reality. It all depends on where we are in the world. The day a prospective volunteer walks in your door with the desire to ‘give back’, even if they don’t know what that really means, they may end up being one of the best volunteers you have ever had. They may not be able to read beyond a sixth grade level, or at all for that matter. But they have heart and desire to give to their community. It may have taken all their inner strength to walk through your door and offer themselves beyond what is comfortable. Look beyond your expectations and see.

Expectations and reality don’t always match, and that’s not a bad thing.

Ann Swain is a featured blogger and the Director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Senior Companion Program.

By Josephine Cooper and Carl Lakari

Last month, we featured a blog from Project AWARE Coordinator, Carl Lakari. This month, we are featuring a letter from one of their youth volunteers, Josephine Cooper.

I want to share with you a letter from one grateful youth volunteer. Read it, find inspiration, share it with your networks … and please remember the potential that exists in our youth. Carl Lakari, Project AWARE Coordinator

Letter from Josephine Cooper, Age 15, Saco, Maine

Project AWARE is an organization that encourages young people to lead in their communities. For me it has done just that. When I joined the Project AWARE Players in 2005 it gave me a chance to use my creativity to better myself and others around me. I am given the opportunity to speak to young people and adults alike, about the importance of an alcohol and drug free lifestyle, and encourage natural highs, and making a difference.
This is my fifth year being a part of the Project AWARE Players. When I was in the sixth grade, I became the director of the Project AWARE Player Juniors. As a sixth grade student I was given the opportunity to write skits pertaining to issues that I was concerned about. Then, present them to students and adults in a creative and fun way. Throughout middle school, I continued to gain self-confidence and a feeling of leadership through the Project AWARE Players, which now serves to my benefit every day of my high school, and one-day adult life. I now provide artistic direction for the Project AWARE Players.
In the summer of 2008, an opportunity arose, which has proved one of the most influential and unexpected of my life. I attended the Project AWARE Summer Film Institute. There, I was able to use my love for film to make more of a difference than I would have ever dreamed. Another Project AWARE Players member and I created a one-minute PSA about the importance of parent role modeling. This is a topic, which affects everyone’s life, and isn’t sufficiently discussed. Several months after the PSA premiered, my partner and I were confronted with a proposition from Project AWARE, to make our PSA into a movie! After a year of planning, writing, casting, and a lot of learning, the shoot for the 30-minute film began. For a week and a half I, a high school student, got the opportunity of a professional director. I worked with a professional camera crew, and professional actors. Everything I had ever learned about leadership was put to the test. I blocked scenes, called action, and watched the magic of film come to life on the monitor.
Never before have I felt so proud. Not only did I get to direct, but I got to act as well, and prepare for the career I hope to someday pursue. I can’t think of a better experience than to be given the chance to not only wear the director’s hat, but that of a writer, producer, and actor as well. It was an exhilarating process, and amazing hands on experience. I became a leader of an entire film operation, all ultimately geared towards making a difference about an issue I feel is of great importance, while being supported by Project AWARE.
Not only have I learned a remarkable amount, and had such great opportunities from being a member of the Project AWARE Players, but I have also met some of the greatest people I could ever hope to encounter in one lifetime. Project AWARE has supplied me, since I was young, with role models. I have grown up with people to encourage me to make a difference, and follow whatever dreams I may have. Also, people to show me the importance of a drug and alcohol free life, and to teach me that there are so many wonderful things out there to spend my precious time doing, rather than wasting it with unhealthy decisions. To this day, I think back on all of the amazing people I would have never met without Project AWARE and the Players.
How many teenagers have the opportunity to speak to a room full of organization heads, and school faculty, about the issues they feel important? How many young people are given the chance to educate children about the importance of healthy choices? How many people in general learn to really be a leader, and express themselves in a creative and meaningful way? Thanks to Project AWARE, these are all things I can proudly say, I have done.

Josephine is one of many youth “volunteers” at Project AWARE .

Carl Lakari is the Project Aware Coordinator and a guest blogger.