Category: volunteer

time, travel, vacation, volunteer

My Year of Hopefulness – Honoring Time

Christa Avampato

I have only been here three days and I am amazed by how easy it has been to leave behind life in the U.S. for a while. I miss my family, my friends, and my neighborhood, though I don’t miss anything else. I can imagine being here for a very long time with no problem at all. It’s a delicious feeling, far different than any feeling I have experienced on any other vacation. How did this place begin to feel like home so quickly?

Today I had a chance conversation with another volunteer about her experience working at a school just outside of Cartago. She told me what struck her most was the great honor that Costa Ricans feel when an international volunteer works with them. They know how many other ways people have to spend their time and the fact that people travel from foreign countries to participate with Costa Ricans, improving the neighborhoods in this country, is truly a gift for them. This idea of honoring time is so different from the way so many feel in the U.S., and it is a pervasive sentiment throughout this country. Costa Ricans place the highest value on time and the way that it is spent.

At the senior center today in San Rafael, we spent time coloring with the seniors and making reindeer Christmas ornaments from pipe cleaners, clothes pins, and glitter. These simple activities brought them so much joy. Truly what they wanted was just to spend time with us, to talk to us about our lives and theirs. I continue to be struck by how little people need to be happy here, and how sad it is for us in the U.S. to believe that we need so much. My great hope for today is that once I return to the U.S. on Saturday night, I will be able to embrace the idea of honoring time, my own and that of others, and to hang onto the idea that truly we need so little in the way of material items. I need to find a way to carry a little Costa Rica with me wherever I go.

change, community service, hope, travel, volunteer, wishes

My Year of Hopefulness – You Get What You Give

Christa Avampato

“What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

I’m off to Costa Rica tomorrow on a volunteer project with Cross-Cultural Solutions. A lot of people have asked me why I chose to do a volunteer vacation. Why would I spend my vacation working? There are several small reasons: I did a volunteer vacation in the south of France in 2005 and loved it, it’s a great way to truly experience the culture of a new country, it’s a fun way to travel alone without being alone, and I enjoy meeting new people more than I enjoy just about anything else. The true reason I’m volunteering on vacation? It’s good for the world – Oprah’s right, as usual. What we give comes back to us, and I would add that it comes back to us 10-fold.

Though I am volunteering to help others, truly it’s me that I’m helping. I am certain that the Cross-Cultural Solutions program will teach me and help me far more than I could ever teach or help anyone else. It’s an interesting fact about service – you go into it to help others and you’re the one who ends up with the greatest benefit from the work. In theory, this doesn’t make sense. In practice, it is most certainly true.

For the past few months I’ve heard a lot of people wishing out loud. They need a better job, a better place to live, better relationships, better health. They have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to acquire these things, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I can help them. I wonder if service might be the best remedy for wishing.

I wonder if it’s really true that what we seek for ourselves we can obtain by providing that very thing for someone else. Love, confidence, money, health, a positive outlook on life, trust, friendship, courage. Our list of wishes is never-ending, and therefore the number of opportunities for service is unlimited. How do our lives change if we take on the view “we only get what we give”? And in the process, how can this view change the whole world? I’ll let you know if I find some answers in Costa Rica. Talk to you tomorrow from beautiful Cartago!

books, child, education, literature, school, volunteer, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Charlotte’s Web

Christa Avampato

I’m reading Charlotte’s Web with my new book buddy, Dwight. Dwight is a 3rd grader who lives in Queens. We got connected through an organization called Learning Leaders. Based in New York City, the provide supplementary educational programs to kids in public schools. Their book buddy program matches up adult volunteers with elementary school students. We read a book together, and write three letters back and forth as we work our way through the story.

As a kid, I loved to read. My house was filled with literally thousands of books, much to the detriment of any semblance of tidiness. While I didn’t love being in a cluttered home, I loved being surrounded by books in every room. Now I recognize that most kids aren’t as lucky as I was to learn to love reading at such a young age. The book buddy program and Dwight are one small way that I hope to turn that around for a kid.

I forgot how much I love Charlotte’s Web. I forgot how scared Wilbur was and how concerned he was with being lonely and making new friends. Children’s literature introduces some heavy themes, despite its light-hearted exterior. Reading this book has made me fall in love with the genre all over again, and encouraged me to continue writing for this age group.

I’ll post up my letters to Dwight and his letters to me on this blog as we continue through. I’m excited to read what he has to say. I’ll meet him in person in February when we all get together for a celebration lunch. Apparently, the kids always think the adults they are writing to are total rock stars – a shot in the arm we could all use!

“Dear Dwight,
I’m really happy to be reading Charlotte’s Web with you and writing letters to each other as we work through the book. This was one of my favorite books when I was in school, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it. I really enjoy reading and I write, too. I always find inspiration for my own writing by reading other books.

I grew up in a very small town about two hours north of Manhattan, along the Hudson River. We had a farm where we grew apples and every fall we would invite people to come pick apples from our property. We didn’t have as many farm animals as there are in Charlotte’s Web, though my sister, Maria, and I spent a lot of time in the woods around our house watching for deer, turkeys, and foxes. We also had a very large pond that had frogs, turtles, and fish.

Our family has always had pets so my love of animals goes back as far as I can remember. We had a lot of dogs, a few cats, an aquarium, and a rabbit, too. My work is very busy now so I don’t have time for a pet at the moment. I hope I can have a pet of my own someday soon.

One part of Charlotte’s Web that I forgotten was how much Wilbur wanted to make new friends in his new home. I have experienced that many times, too. I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school with all of my same friends. When I went to college and then to graduate school, I didn’t know anyone so I had to make all new friends. At first that experience was scary, though the more often I had to make new friends, the easier it became. Now meeting new people is one of my favorite things to do.

What’s been your favorite part of the book so far? What kind of plan do you think Charlotte will make to help save her friend, Wilbur? I’m looking forward to your first letter!

Your Book Buddy,
Christa”

community service, happiness, passion, volunteer, women

My Year of Hopefulness – Our Best Help

Christa Avampato

“Anybody can serve….You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve been doing some work with New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE), a group dedicated to helping women launch and run successful social enterprises that have a profound impact on our society. Through a recent NYWSE event, I found A. Lauren Abele’s blog. Lauren “is an economic development program assistant at a community development nonprofit in Brooklyn. By night, Lauren volunteers with other nonprofits helping them with fund development, strategic planning, and social media. She is one of the 2009 NYWSE Mastermind-Mentoring Initiative (MMI) graduates and big-time NYWSE advocate.”

This week she posted her thoughts on how best to help a cause you care about. Her post really resonated with me. In relation to my post from yesterday about doing things we don’t know how to do, Lauren advocates for helping the cause, any cause that interests us, by channeling our own special gifts and talents. If we want to make a difference, we can figure out how best to do that by delving deep within our own hearts. Just begin. We best help the cause by being who we are.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about fitting into a form versus creating a form around our own passions. It’s a very different intention, a very different way of considering service. If we approach service first from the perspective of “what do I love to do, what am I good at, and when am I happiest?” and then find the circumstances that best showcase those activities, we’ll achieve our highest potential.

Lauren’s shining a light on something very profound. Consider this: let’s say that you are passionate about the environment. There are so many options for you to really lend a hand to this cause. You could work with your local park or community garden. You could organize a recycling event in your neighborhood. You could support local farmers. You could write about the cause, sharing your knowledge and interest in the subject with others. There a million ways to play a part – all that’s required is that you care and then channel that care into an activity that brings you joy.

It sounds so simple and yet we spend so much time trying to do what’s “right” for the cause, what we think the cause needs, rather than taking what we do well and doing that for the cause’s benefit. Really what’s right for the cause is that we just be present, that we contribute in some way that’s uniquely, beautifully us.

The image above can be found here.

childhood, children, education, school, teaching, volunteer, yoga

My Year of Hopefulness – Doing What We’ve Never Done

Christa Avampato

All week I’ve been trying to write curriculum for my after-school pilot program. I’m not a trained teacher. I’ve tutored and I’ve volunteered in classrooms. Mostly, I’ve just been up there at the wipe board (apparently the blackboards and chalk of my youth are long-since gone) winging it.

Rather than writing curriculum, I’ve been staring at a very blank white screen on my laptop, complete with blinking cursor. And that little tiny voice, the one I just dread, decides to show up at the most inopportune time to make me feel even worse. “Who are you to be writing curriculum?” it says. “You don’t know how to do that.” And as much as I want to turn down that volume, the voice grows louder, adding more doubts, more concerns, and more insecurity to my already frazzled mind. I have no idea what I’m doing. There’s no denying that.

At 11:00 last night, I closed down my laptop without having written a single word. “The voice was right,” I thought. “Who do I think I am? An untrained “teacher” writing curriculum. I can’t do this.” I did what I often do when I’m frustrated with my writing. I read. The latest issue of Yoga Journal just arrived in my mailbox so I cracked it open and began reading from page one.

There is a belief in yoga, and I believe in Buddhism as well, that the Universe will provide us with the exact teaching we need exactly when we need it. Kaitlin Quistgaard, the Editor of Yoga Journal, wrote this month’s editorial note about how to show up for life and begin something we want to do even if we aren’t sure how to do it. “It seemed like a life lesson designed to show me the value of doing my part, even if I don’t know what to do,” she says of a recent incident she had. This sounds like valuable ammunition against that little voice that was doubting me. I keep reading.

A few pages later, I come across an article by Julia Butterfly Hill who talks about finding your purpose and growing with it. Hmmm…sounds like another good one. The whole article is one beautiful quote after another. “Who am I supposed to be in my life?…what do you want your legacy to be?…We approach everything backward…we live in a production-driven society rather than a purpose-driven society.” And here’s my favorite line that I’m considering having made into a t-shirt: “We don’t have to know how to do something before we begin it.” Though I’m a product developer, paid to produce, I am much more concerned with living my life with purpose than with things.

So that’s it – that’s all I needed to know to silence the little voice nagging at me. It’s true – I don’t know how to write a curriculum. I don’t know what material will resonate with the kids I want to teach. I don’t know how to actually do anything related to this project. I do know that I am a fast learner, and that I was born not knowing much of anything except how to breath, (and even that breathing isn’t something we do consciously!) I do know that I want to live in a world where every child has the opportunity to learn anything and everything that interests them. I want them all to grow up happy, healthy, safe, and excited about the possibilities that lay before them. I want them all to have a chance at a good and decent life. And that’s more than enough purpose to keep going.

The photo above can be found here.

community service, NBC, volunteer

My Year of Hopefulness – Everyone Has Something to Offer

Christa Avampato

Tonight’s Making a Difference segment on NBC featured Coach Tim, a man who grew up in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles. Compton is now known as a haven of drugs, gangs, and violence. When Coach Tim was growing up, he played baseball in Compton – on a baseball diamond that was abandoned decades ago. He returned to the neighborhood after years of his own troubles – drugs, alcohol – to revive that baseball diamond into his own field of dreams for kids growing up on the same streets where he was raised.

The segment was enough to make any viewer choke up with emotion – and then, the real kicker. Coach Tim is homeless. For two years, he’s lived in his car. At night, he watches Dodgers games on his portable TV and reads the Bible for strength to get through another day. He could go to a shelter, though because he knows he got himself into his situation, he wants to get himself out of it without public assistance.

Those kids on his baseball team serve a larger purpose in his life – they give him a reason for being, for getting out into the world. They give him a way to do some good in a neighborhood that is faced with so much difficulty and saddness and loss. He’s keeping those kids from going down a path that he and so many of his childhood friends took simply because they didn’t know any better.

Coach Tim’s story made me think about how much we all have to offer, regardless of our situation, means, and history. Or maybe, like Coach Tim, we all have something to give precisely because of our history and situation. To make a difference in your neighborhood, visit Volunteer Match, Serve.org, or United Way.

Examiner, family, friendship, relationships, Tim Russert, volunteer, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Tim Russert, revisited

Christa Avampato

This weekend it’s been one year since we lost Tim Russert. It’s only fitting that I’d happen to be in DC this weekend with friends who are celebrating some very big events in their lives – weddings, new jobs, and a general sense of hope despite a tough economy. When Tim passed away one year ago, what stood out to me what the comment that he lived every day as if he had just won the lottery. I wanted to live my life that way, too, so I set about doing that.

I thought about every area of my life and put some ideas into action to improve each. One year later, I’m doing pretty well. It’s not the lottery feeling just yet, though there are many, many things that I am grateful for:

I have certainly expanded my writing: blogging daily with an eye toward publishing a selection of posts at year-end as a free e-book and blogging about entrepreneurship for my Examiner.com column.

With my friends and family, I have put forward a significant amount of effort to spend quality, individual time. I used to run around as much as possible to try to fit time in with everyone all the time. The trouble with that method is that I ended up short-changing each, and short-changing myself. The quality time method is working much better.

In my volunteering, I wanted to extend more effort in areas that really interested me. Along with a colleague at work, I am beginning to put together a social media plan for a theatre company I admire. I took my social media interest and knowledge, my background in theatre, and roll-ed it up to do some pro-bono work that will help me build up a portfolio in this area. Using a little creativity, I created a win-win situation for all.

The work side of my life is always a work in progress. With the economy in tough shape, it’s the area of my life where I’ve had to make some compromises. I am learning a lot every day – about product development, what to do and what not to do (I’ve found the later to be just as important as the former), and I’ve learned what kind of work is best suited for me going forward. I’ve really developed the insight that I am passionate about small business (thanks in large part to my Examiner.com column); whether that means working for a small business or working for a large company that helps small businesses, I’m not sure. At the very least, it feels good to finally have that direction in my career and it keeps me looking forward.

Winning the lottery in life is a process – every day, we have to make choices and renew our commitment to living the best life we can. It takes courage to get up and follow our hearts in each area of our lives. And no matter how much work it is, there is no more worthwhile pursuit. I hope Tim would agree.

investing, travel, volunteer

My Year of Hopefulness – Costa Rica, here I come!

Christa Avampato

Last night I had dinner with my friend, Jeff, who’s turning 30 next month. To celebrate, he’s going to Egypt and asked friends to come along. Because of the economy, most of us backed out. Last night, Jeff told me he booked the trip for 3 people, $2000 each – includes airfare, tours, and most of their meals. I almost fell over. I missed out on Egypt for $2000 because I was a little bit afraid of losing my job. (I’m currently still employed.) What a lost opportunity!

Cross-Cultural Solutions contacted me today to see if I had any more questions about booking a trip with them. (They have incredible customer service!) I wrote back a very apologetic note saying that my company had just announced that we’d go through another round of layoffs next month so I had to hold off and see how that worked out for me. Even though a trip with Cross-Cultural Solutions is 100% tax deductible, I still hesitated.

A long time ago a friend of mine sent me a quote that rings in my head all the time: “The world is a very generous place. It gives you the same lesson over and over until you finally learn it and don’t have to go through it any more.” Costa Rica was my next Egypt.

The moment I got home, I dropped my bag, headed for my Mac, whipped out my credit card, and signed up for a trip to Costa Rica with Cross-Cultural Solutions. Like everyone else I know, I’m nervous about the economy. But does that mean I just go into a holding pattern? Do I not take advantage of a great opportunity out of fear?

Now, I will say that I am in a very good position to just take the money for my trip from my savings and it’s a huge benefit to have the trip be tax-deductible. Still, it would be very easily justified to hunker down and not take this trip. It’s a matter of priorities, and international travel and volunteering are important to me. So this trip is not an expense, it’s an investment opportunity. In me. In the world. And I’m grabbing it with both hands.

career, charity, community, community service, family, philanthropy, volunteer, women

My Year of Hopefulness – Women in Need

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I participated in an event at work as part of my women’s networking group. We provided workshops, some career coaching, and a healthy dose of encouragement to women who are in homeless shelters, unemployed, and who need a hand up in life. My networking group goes by the acronym WIN (Women’s Integration Network).

I had volunteered to have a 1-on-1 lunch with one of the women who were visiting our office for the day. I was paired up with a woman who had an 11 year old daughter. Married, both she and her husband have been unemployed for some time. No college education, with a goal of being a social worker. We were joined by another woman who didn’t have a lunch buddy. She had an 11 year old brother she was taking care of as well as a 1 year old daughter. She lives in a homeless shelter and began taking care of her brother after her mother had a nervous break-down. The father of her child is incarcerated, out of the picture. She hasn’t had work in a while either, citing affordable and hard-to-come-by childcare as a major obstacle. She wants to go to school to be a nurse. Both are 25 years old.

What was I going to say to these women? How could I relate? How could I even begin to understand how difficult it is for them to just get up out of bed in the morning?

And then one of the women, the one who wants to be a nurse, said to me “Your name tag – you’re from Women in Need.” (Women In Need is the community group they belong to that helps these women find jobs, get money for school, and provides emotional support.)

“No, I work here in this office building,” I replied.

“But your name tag says – WIN. That stands for Women in Need.”

“Oh! That’s also the acronym for our internal networking group here at this company. It stands for Women’s Integration Network.”

And with that simple revelation, I realized these women were not very different from me at all. My mom raised by sister, brother, and I on her own, no college education. We struggled with food and housing and health insurance. We had trouble keeping the lights and the heat on. Though that was many years ago, it’s still there in me. All of it. I remember being hungry and afraid and hopeless. I remember having dreams that seemed unlikely, foolish, and impossibly out of reach.

I told them about putting myself through school twice, about my mom, about the role of education in my life and the advantages it provided to me. I smiled and laughed and asked them about their kids and their daily lives. I listened to them talk about their frustrations and hopes. And all it took was time – that’s all it cost it me.

Through that lunch, I realized that there is a lot I can offer in these tough times, a lot of people I can help to live happier, healthier, more successful lives. And it doesn’t involve any kind of extraordinary act. All it takes is me sitting down with people who are down and out, and telling them about my life and how I made it better, how so many people helped me along the way.

It’s really just a way to pay forward all the blessings I have been fortunate enough to encounter. The people who helped me (my mom, my teachers, guidance counselors, some of my bosses, friends, authors, speakers, and the list goes on) were angels, and without them I am certain that I would have failed. This current recession provides us with an incredible opportunity to give and participate. It gives us a chance to repay the kindnesses we’ve witnessed.

New York City, nonprofit, philanthropy, volunteer

My Year of Hopefulness – NYC Service

Christa Avampato

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.” ~George Eliot

Today Mayor Bloomberg launched a new initiative in New York City to make it easier and more efficient for New Yorkers to volunteer in our city. There are a number of services out there like Volunteermatch.com that are similar in mission though I find this new site, NYC Service, incredibly easy to use and its layout helps site visitors to sift volunteer interests more efficiently.

Don’t find an opportunity that’s quite right for you? No problem – you can create your own. Additionally, you can download a preparedness tool kit and a tool kit to help you reduce your carbon footprint. You can also get more information about NYC Civic Corps, similar to AmeriCorps specifically focused on NYC. Nonprofit can post a volunteer opportunity and businesses can sign up as partners of the effort.

And here’s my favorite part: the BLANK effort. Fill in the BLANK. Everyone has something to give. Time. Effort. Funds. Passion. Interests. Energy. These are incredible resources. And they exist everywhere, within all of us. We all have something to give. Regardless of circumstances, financial ability, skills sets, race, gender, religion, culture. We can all give, and our city will be better for our volunteerism. People move mountains, and we are surrounded by mountains. Lend a hand. Visit NYC Service today.