Darnelh Muolic – INC Giving Project

Help the Elderly with Menifee Better Together

Hi, I’m Loris! I’ve been an INC Giving volunteer since the creation of the project back in 2011. I’ve coordinated many volunteer opportunities in my community– like showing appreciation to local school teachers; spending an afternoon at senior homes providing entertainment; and holding a literacy night for the kids in our area—we created an environment where we brought books to life and provided them fun ways of reading.

Over the past 10 years, the INC Giving Project has led us in helping and serving our own communities. They have given us ideas and tools to guide and encourage us to truly help those in need. Out of all the times I and other INC Giving volunteers helped in our community, the one act of kindness that I still reflect on is when we helped the elderly who were independent with their landscaping. It may seem like a small and regular chore to us, but that’s because we’re still able to move around freely and not get as tired. For them, mowing the lawn or trimming the surrounding foliage is a tiring task.

When the opportunity came up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity-Inland Valley and help the city of Menifee, under the Menifee Better Together event to help take care of the elderly there, I signed up right away. Of course, I had no idea what we were really going to do, but helping our elderly is something we’ve been taught at a young age. So why not give up one Saturday afternoon in helping the elderly in their homes?

The day came, and I was ready with my INC Giving shirt. A twenty-minute drive from Temecula, I found myself with other volunteers from all over the city! I was nervous but hey! We’re all here to help. As I smiled my way to the table where we were instructed to pick a house for our organization to take care of for the day, I met people of all ages. It was so reassuring to see the eagerness they had to help the seniors in our area. It dawned on me that kindness really does bring people together.

The event started with instructions of what we were supposed to do and not to do. After some opening remarks, we were told we were free to start heading over to the house we assigned ourselves to. As we arrived, I was in shock at how overgrown everything was. The houses in the area mostly had rocks and such for desert weather, while others still had traditional landscaping.

We were informed this particular house we volunteered for had many violations from the city because of how overgrown everything became. It was a safety issue for the residents in the area. The trees had grown long enough to cover the utility box near the sidewalk. The bushes that lined the sidewalk had completely grown into the streets. Anyone who would have passed by could have tripped and fallen due to all the plants covering the sidewalk. The backyard was the same—everything was overgrown and untouched for so long. The pool contained no water— just weeds and debris. Branches from trees were scattered, and rose bushes looked like rose trees.

The rest of the volunteers from my local congregation and I got to work. We were provided with the tools to mow the lawn, cut branches of the trees, hedge the shrubs, and fertilize the planters near the house. We continued to prune the branches of the fruit trees and add mulch to the plants. After two hours, the front and backyard were once again recognizable. The homeowner gazed from their window and waved and nodded their appreciation for the help we were able to lend them.

I’d say this particular volunteer opportunity really stood out to me because the actual task of helping a senior with yard work is simple, and we take for granted the simple things we’re able to do. Secondly, taking care of our seniors and helping the elderly in your community is a part of the giving lifestyle. We’ve been taught to respect our elders and hold them in high regard. By helping them out, we’re able to continue to give them a sense of community and take away any feeling of loneliness or isolation. There are many jobs helping seniors and a lot of different types of jobs working with the elderly, so there’s a volunteer opportunity waiting for you.

If you haven’t been able to volunteer as of late, you should take the opportunity to. Any act of kindness goes a long way! So take the time to see how you can volunteer locally or even globally. You don’t have to go by yourself, ask your friends, family and anyone else to tag along and spend an afternoon or day making a difference in someone else’s life.

About the author:

Loris Jomok is a writer and editor at incmedia.org. She is also an active INC Giving volunteer in Southern California.

Volunteering with Project Open Hand

I’ve always loved the idea of helping people. I even went to school to be a nurse because I wanted to dedicate my life to helping those in need. Although I didn’t end up moving forward in the medical field, I’ve found other ways to help people. For the past 10 years, I’ve participated in a number of volunteer services through the INC Giving Project, like playing board games with and singing to the elderly, planting trees in my neighborhood, cleaning up the coastline, tutoring children, and donating clothes to those in need during the wintertime…the list can go on and on. But there was one specific time that I will not forget: being a Project Open Hand volunteer.

Food kitchens are a great place to volunteer because you’re helping to provide people with something that is very pertinent to life—food. Not everyone has the privilege of having food ready and available to put on the table for their family every night, but places like Project Open Hand strive to do just that for the sick and vulnerable, who may find it difficult to even get out and grocery shop for themselves.

This particular activity will always be near and dear to my heart because my co-workers and I were able to do this as a team. We searched for volunteer opportunities in San Francisco, took the day to drive out and dedicated our time to providing meals for the residents. We all had our INC Giving shirts on, rubber gloves, and caps—we were ready to get to work. We were assigned a variety of different tasks, like portioning frozen meat or ravioli and putting them into bags, gathering items on a grocery list for specific clients and handing it to them, sealing bags of different foods to place in the shop area, and much more. Some of those tasks were done together as a group, then we eventually split up to perform other jobs.

We were able to meet many people who regularly spend time volunteering with Project Open Hand SF. We were also able to see the smiles of many clients who were so happy to have food to bring home that night. For me, that was the biggest take-away—knowing that I helped in putting a smile on someone’s face meant the world to me. That’s the reason I enjoy helping people in the first place.

It was such a great experience to be able to bond with my co-workers, all the while collectively spending our time for a better purpose. We were able to help people, and whether the act was big or small, to us didn’t matter. The look on the faces of the clients spoke volumes of the thankfulness they felt for Project Open Hand and their volunteers.

If you’ve been thinking about volunteering, take this as your sign to get out there and make someone’s day a little bit better. Even if all you have time to do is write a quick note and leave it on someone’s car—any act of kindness, big or small, will make a difference in someone else’s day. We all know what it’s like to have an act of kindness done for us. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we all just passed that around and everyone around us felt like that too?

About the author:

Rachelle Jen Radoc is a producer and staff writer at INC Media. She is also an active INC Giving volunteer in the Bay Area. She joined the Church Of Christ in 2010 and loves singing in the choir. Rachelle is a BTS fan who loves going to the gym. She and her husband live in the San Francisco Bay Area with their young son.

5 Things I Learned With Habitat For Humanity

“Enjoy what you do and it will never be work.” We’ve all heard that saying. This typically applies to a career path or job choice. But I think it just as easily applies to volunteering. Most people would consider a full day at a construction site; climbing ladders, painting, hammering, and cutting, as doing “work.” But lucky for me, I enjoy helping in that way. So when I heard there was an opportunity to help with Habitat for Humanity in a nearby city, I signed up along with some friends! It was one of my favorite volunteer opportunities. Here are the top 5 things I learned volunteering at Habitat For Humanity.

The need is there

I live in California and you don’t have to travel far to see the need for housing. The housing crisis has worsened each year with more and more finding themselves homeless. While there are some more immediate solutions for individuals, housing for an entire family can be more challenging to come by. For some, it is practically impossible. While registering to volunteer, I learned that the homes I would be helping with were going to military veterans and their families. I have friends and family that are military veterans. So this opportunity hit a bit closer to home and made it even more fulfilling because I was familiar with some of the challenges veterans and their families face.

Friends make the experience even better

I must admit, I am a bit of an introvert. So when it comes to doing hands-on work like cutting, building, and painting, I tend to like being on my own. I like to focus on the task and enjoy the momentary solitude. But having friends work on such an awesome project, alongside me was really special. It was a day filled with paint splatters, shared laughter, and a lot of silly moments. It was a day we could reflect on happily for years to come. It was also special because I was reminded that my friends and I shared the same values and really connected on a level beyond the laughter and silliness of friendship. We were there together working hard to make the most of this opportunity–not for recognition or even peer pressure. It was a need we recognized and an opportunity to help some local families whom we wouldn’t have normally had the chance to help.

There is always something new to learn

Who knew you could learn new skills by volunteering? As mentioned, I enjoy this type of work–cutting, measuring, painting, assembling, climbing ladders. It’s great! But as familiar as I was with many of the tasks we were given, there were still a lot of things I learned. For the things I was familiar with, I found more efficient or effective ways to do it. I also learned how to do things I had never done before. For example, I had never painted the high portions of the walls along a stairwell. I never thought of how painters painted the spaces beyond their reach. I assumed a really long pole and a paint roller would do the trick. While that works in some cases, if you want a closer look and more thorough coverage, you have to get a bit closer. But how do you get closer? A ladder or two and a very thick wooden plank to walk on! With the use of the existing steps of the stairs and an adjustment to one set of legs on the ladder, a scaffolding can be created that easily adjusts along the steps, bringing us safely closer to the harder-to-reach sections of the walls.

There is always someone new to meet

Another really fun aspect of volunteering with Habitat For Humanity was meeting new people that shared a common goal. I’ve established that it was a lot of fun working with my friends, but it was also fun meeting these new people who were also on the construction site. Some were actual construction workers and home builders–actual experts. It was great picking their brain and learning what methods they used in accomplishing everything on our task list for the day. I thoroughly enjoyed all the technical lingo being thrown around. But just as there were experts from the field, there were those just as inexperienced as my friends and I; and we learned from them that there are other creative ways to successfully accomplish the tasks on our list. I really valued their out-of-the-box thinking and have held on to many of the things I learned from them and apply it even to my daily life. It truly shows that, beyond gaining technical knowledge, there are life lessons learned by volunteering.

Time well spent

Helping others, in ways big and small, is never a waste. On an individual level and as a team, we gained so much. We ended that day with a better understanding of how volunteer efforts like this truly make a difference. There is always something from an experience that will help us grow. We started bright and early at 7am and ended the day at 3pm. It was a full day of work. But since I enjoyed it so much, it really was just a full day of helping, friendship, laughter and learning. By all accounts, it was a day well spent and one I wouldn’t hesitate to do again.

About the Author:

Nan Zapanta is the host of Blueprint and is a producer at incmedia.org.

Volunteering Helps New Grads Gain Experience

Every year new grads are faced with the predicament of needing the experience to land their first job. The problem is they don’t have a job to gain the experience they need. Tricky, right?

This year is no different. After starting the year in the strongest job market in 50 years, recent college grads now face an uphill battle when it comes to landing their dream job out of college due to the global pandemic.

Consider the following:

The unemployment rate for young people age 20 to 24 was 12.5% in September, the highest among adults.
As of October, eleven million people remain unemployed, about twice the number in February.
Job postings remain well below pre-pandemic levels.

While it’s easy to get caught up worrying about the stats and the current economy, here’s how you can gain valuable experience to build your resume and make a difference through volunteering.

Three Ways Volunteer Experience Helps New Grads

Gain experience and Do Good

Most non-profit organizations have a similar structure as the companies you’ve been sending applications to — human resources, digital media, marketing finance, IT, project management, etc. But while the corporation you want to work for has a budget to hire, many non-profits look to volunteers to help with their day-to-day operations.

Reach out to an organization you care about and volunteer. Whether it’s writing thank you letters to donors, helping manage their social media presence, or even helping design their website, there’s an opportunity to gain relevant experience and develop your skills while supporting an organization that matters to you.

An Opportunity to Network

Your fellow volunteers might be hiring managers, directors, entrepreneurs, etc. Having the opportunity to work side by side with them is an opportunity for you to create meaningful connections with like-minded individuals who may one day help you connect with a dream job or mentor you.

Plus, when you’re volunteering, the atmosphere tends to be more relaxed, allowing you the opportunity to shine without the pressure to impress.

Helps with Your Stress Levels

Looking for a job can be stressful. You’re worried about paying back college loans, paying rent, and it’s easy to get caught up and stress yourself out. Volunteering helps you counter that by your brain releasing happy chemicals also known as dopamine, oxytocin, endorphin, and serotonin when you volunteer.

According to the Mayo Clinic Health System, when we boost these chemicals in our brains, it helps to “decrease blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone that directly impacts stress levels” and you end up with those special, deep, and touching moments.

As you can see, while going out into your community to do good is useful in developing your resume and experience, volunteering can also help improve your well-being, especially when uncertainty about the future is causing increased anxiety and stress.

Here’s how you can get started.

How to Gain Valuable Experience through Volunteering

Reach out to non-profits you care about and offer you help.

Maybe it’s an organization you’ve worked within the past or one you’ve admired from afar. Reach out and see what volunteer opportunities they currently have and how you can sign up.

Pro-Tip: Regularly volunteering with the same organization can help you establish relationships with organizers and open up many more opportunities that may not be listed on their website.

Look around your neighborhood

Sometimes the opportunity to help is just around the corner. When the pandemic hit in 2020, INC Giving volunteers, Natalie Fitzpatrick from Surrey, British Columbia, and Kesha Marges from New York City discovered that they didn’t need to go too far to find individuals to help. With neighbors unable to leave their homes due to the coronavirus, Natalie and Kesha took it upon themselves to pitch in and volunteer.

Learn more about what Natalie and Kesha did and see how you can do it in your neighborhood.

Get Creative and Create Your Opportunities

Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to volunteer yet, or you’re not sure where to start, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating an opportunity that brings together your interests and what you studied in school.

Take, for example, Sharlene Oca, a young teacher who took it upon herself to set up a Storytime Online when the shutdown started and kids weren’t able to go to school. Or Josh Menachen, a young chef in New York who used his culinary skills to feed those on the front lines.

Thinking outside the box and creating opportunities to do good can highlight soft skills your future employers are looking for like initiative, creative thinking, and problem-solving.

It might take time for the economy and job market to get back to what it was pre-covid, but it doesn’t mean you need to sit and wait for that moment to come to work on your resume. Go out there and volunteer! While you’re out spreading kindness, you’ll be doing something to help your development. How great is that?

We’d love to hear how you’re making a difference in your community. Send us your story or post it on social media and use #incgiving and #makekindnesscontagious in your post.

About the Writer:

Renezen Benedicto is a web content producer for INCMedia.org. She’s a long-time INC Giving volunteer and loves helping local organizations like Muttville and Back on My Feet.

Finding Ways to Volunteer Virtually

I love this time of year.

Enjoying the great weather, drinking hot lattes, wearing sweaters, and volunteering with Special Olympics Northern California, has always made winter my favorite season. I loved spending my weekends wearing my INC Giving hoodie and running around Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, cheering and coaching athletes during the soccer season. Unfortunately, with Covid-19 cases still on the rise and social distancing guidelines, soccer won’t be happening for a while.

However, not all opportunities to volunteer and help the community are on hold this year.

In fact, like many organizations, non-profits have taken the opportunity to pivot and shift some options online. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a passion for helping others.

Five Virtual Volunteering Opportunities and Where to Find Them

1. Mock Interviews for Job Seekers

Sign up with organizations that train students and job seekers to prepare for job interviews. Volunteering to conduct virtual mock interviews is a great way to help individuals prepare for interviews that will be conducted online.

Look up job training organizations in your area to find opportunities to help with mock interviews and even to review resumes.

2. Connect with Seniors and Home-bound Individuals

The ongoing pandemic has left seniors even more isolated from the world, leading to higher levels of loneliness and anxiety among the elderly. To help reach out and connect with this at-risk population, volunteers call seniors and home-bound residents once a week to check-in and see how they’re doing.

Research local organizations working with seniors before the pandemic, and see how they’re staying connected and how you can help.

3. Contribute Your Language Skills

If you’re fluent in another language, volunteer to translate documents so they can be accessible for others. The process is simple. Follow the steps to become a certified translator and claim your first assignment with Translators without Borders.

4. Use Your Writing Skills for Good

Non-profits depend on clear communication with donors, volunteers, and their community to keep their organization going. Volunteer your time to write thank-you notes, help organizations tell their inspiring stories or help create engaging social media posts.
These opportunities might not be listed online, so don’t hesitate to reach out and offer your help.

Sign up to be on call on Be My Eyes, a free app that connects volunteers with blind or low-vision individuals who need help to tackle challenges and solve problems through a live video call.

From helping someone find something they dropped on the floor to helping read birthday cards, the opportunities can happen anywhere and anytime.

Spread Kindness and Connect Online

While volunteering online feels like you’re missing out on the vital face-to-face component, I’ve found that these virtual opportunities allow you to connect in a way that wasn’t always available in person or in large groups.

I recently joined a group of volunteers to conduct mock interviews, review LinkedIn Profiles, and give feedback to trainees going through the Computer Technologies Program in Berkeley. Computer Technologies Program (CTP) provides people with disabilities for professional employment by providing technical training, coaching, and associated services. With breakout sessions and one-on-one feedback sessions built into the virtual event, we got the chance to provide much-needed support to individuals looking for help to move forward in their new careers.

And as a volunteer, the opportunity was both a rewarding and humbling experience.

Look for Virtual Opportunities that Interest You

With more and more organizations moving opportunities online, there is probably an opportunity that fits your passion and interest. Reach out to an organization you’re familiar with or try any of the options we listed above.
We’d love to hear how you’re volunteering online. Send us your story or post it online using #incgiving and #makekindnesscontagious, and let’s do our part in spreading kindness.