First, I had to fill an application online, and then choose a orientaion day. Mine was on Thursday October 13Th, 2011from 7pm to 8pm
When I arrived there, the room was full of people, people who came to be volunteer like me. It was interesting to see the diversity of people who care of others, all different ethnics were here, all different social classes were here, all together for one cause. This was amazing. That shows that this is a place of unity. Seated, I was listening to the speaker. She was a lady around of 50, really comfortable at speaking, she was dressed in black and white: very formal dressing. There were a lot of interactions between her and us, she gave us opportunities to ask questions. The set was nice: the walls were white, the seats were red: those were the colors of New York Cares ( I just realize that the Red Cross, that is a same type of organization, has the same color, maybe those colors have a signification....). On the left wall there were three photographs of three celebrities and the same citation : “I am a New Yorker who cares”. I think this was some publicity to show to people that even celebrities do it. One of them was Whoopi Goldberg. The lady was introducing to us the different opportunities. We can help adult build better life
( research of employment, language tutorial for immigrant...). We can use our skills to help
(ex: computer skills), we can serve as volunteer in nursing home, or by maintaining neighborhood park....There were so many way to volunteer! We really have choices.
Then she talked about how to apply to New York cares on the website. Once go there, we had to create an account, fill the application, and then start to search for projects to do. In face of a project, there is always the number of availability. Each project has a team leader. In project research, we can search for in project according to the type, to the location, to the time...there is a lot of flexibility. In case we don’t have Internet, we can still sign up to a project by call. If any problem happen and avoid us to complete the project it is important to contact our team leader, if not we will have a “no show”.If we have 6 “no show” on 6 months, we have to do our orientation again.She finally ended by encourage us to live this experience and sign up to a project as soon as possible.
