St. Vincent de Paul Village

1. Truck Drivers Honored
   By David Hecht
2. Tony Learns to Care for Himself
   By Martha Lepore
3. Volunteers Share A Connection
   By Emilie Bromet
   St. Vincent’s Program Manager of Volunteer Services
4. "They Shall Shine Like Stars"
   By Michael Wall
   Director of Planned Giving

Volunteers Share A Connection
By Emilie Bromet
St. Vincent’s Program Manager of Volunteer Services

   Every year more than 13,000 people volunteer their time and talents to serve the residents and community at St. Vincent de Paul Village. Countless more are diligently volunteering at Martha’s Village & Kitchen, Father Joe’s M.A.S.H. Village and the other Villages. These thousands of volunteers are a diverse group, ranging in age from the toddler helping his parent on an off-site volunteer project to the senior citizen caring for a child in the Foster Grandparent Program. The men and women of our volunteer corps are of every race, ethnicity and faith. They reflect the diversity of the staff they work with and the people they serve.

   Volunteers are also diverse in the reasons why they serve others. Some volunteer to give back to their community; others answer a personal and spiritual call to service. Some are here to meet other people or to learn about certain issues or careers; others to get a feeling of accomplishment or appreciation, or out of loyalty to the leaders of our organization. And some are volunteering because they were asked or told to do so, either through a community service program in their school or through the court system.

  Regardless of their reasons, our volunteers have some very important things in common. They are all making a huge contribution of service to our residents and the community. Each and every one of them shows a commitment to Father Joe’s Villages. And they all believe in and volunteer according to the CREED, with Compassion, Respect, Empathy, Empowerment and Dignity towards the people they serve and each other.

   There is one other thing that is common to the volunteers here at the Village – they all get something out of their experience here: knowledge, skills and friends. For most volunteers, their experience is deeply personal. Many are not even aware of what that benefit is. Susan J. Ellis, a leader in the volunteer management profession, states in an article entitled “A Volunteerism Perspective on the Days after the 11th of September” that “…many volunteers deeply need to be doing something constructive and communal for their own mental health, as an outlet for rage, and to overcome the sense of powerlessness. No apologies necessary and great proof of how such service benefits the giver as well as the receiver.”

   Closer to home, our very own Americorp volunteer, Dennis Ostmeyer, writes about his year-long experience in the Career and Education and Family Literacy Programs.“I have learned to be open and to see things from different perspectives. I have learned that when many different people unite together for an honorable purpose, that despite the many complications that are often unavoidable, something fruitful will always come out of it. I guess I would say volunteering is very similar to the concept of faith. For those who want to believe faith can move mountains, volunteering in an affirmation of what faith can accomplish.