by jmontalvo

In the world of volunteering, you have two main options to keep in mind: donating time and donating money. In donating time, you actually go to an event or a shelter and offer labor to support a cause. In donating money, you conduct fundraisers to earn money for a cause. Either option can be helpful in the end, but sometimes one is more important than the other. It is your job to determine when it is more important to raise money and when it is best to take time away from your IT career. Here is a basic guide that should be able to help you figure out which option is right for you.

Times When Donating Time Is Appropriate

Donating time works well for situations that require a lot of labor. For instance, let’s think back on Hurricane Katrina, which pretty much wiped out the city of New Orleans. When that happened, tons and tons and tons of people sent money, clothes, food, etc. for the relief effort. What people didn’t send was helpers to sort through all of the donations and distribute them to the hurricane victims. In situations like that where hands-on work is a necessity, you need to make an effort to help out physically, not financially. The donations are already there. You need to be around to help in other ways.

Another instance where donating time may be more appropriate is when you don’t have any money to give. (Duh!) In all seriousness, there are just some times when you can’t donate any money, materials, or anything along those lines. In that case, a little bit of elbow grease may be all you need to provide to help out. There is nothing wrong with using your energy as a form of payment. It is still help at the end of the day. If that is all you can do, so be it.

Times When Donating Money Is Appropriate

Donating money is great for situations where finances are really the only element missing in a relief. For example, let’s say that a local hospital is looking to expand its emergency room and it already has access to contractors who will do the job. The only thing that the hospital is missing is the money to pay for the contractors and the materials needed for the renovation. Your donation could be the final stepping stone to the hospital’s walk to success. Assess the situation carefully and determine if money could really make a difference. If so, bring out the check book.

Creating a Balance between Money and Time

In some cases, you may be able to help out with both your time and your money. This is usually true for building projects, where an organizations needs both the materials and the labor to get a job done. Habitat for Humanity always needs people to help out around the shop, and it also needs people to donate money and materials to help the workers build homes. If you want to work with an organization like that, you may want to find a way to spend time and money helping out. All of your efforts will be appreciated in the end.

Think about each volunteering opportunity individually and determine where you will be of the most service. If you think you need to help out by donating time, then try to free a little of it in your schedule. If you think you need to help out by donating money, then try to free a little of it in your bank account. You should be able to find a perfect solution somewhere down the road.

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by jmontalvo

Over volunteering? How the heck can you over volunteer? Believe it or not, there is such a thing as overworking yourself as a volunteer. I know. I’ve been there. No matter how much you may care about the world around you, there has to come a time when you take a break from the fundraisers, the blood drives, the marathons, and everything else just to give yourself a chance to breathe. It’s hard enough to balance work, a family, and learning how to become an administrative assistant without overstretching yourself with volunteering too. Here are some tips to help you moderate your giving to a logical state.

Learn to Say No

I am the queen of saying yes when I really shouldn’t, so I know how hard it is to turn down a volunteering project that comes your way. You think you’re invincible; you can handle anything. You can be everywhere for everyone, and you can do so with a smile on your face. The fact is that there are only so many hours in the day to help other people. You can’t do everything you want to do, no matter how much you try. Sometimes it is better to say no just so you don’t get someone else’s hopes up. False promises are a lot worse than declines, no matter what they are about. You’ll find that out the hard way if you say yes to more people than you can actually attend to.

Prioritize Your Time

As great as it is to volunteer, that is not going to pay your bills at the end of the day. I’m not suggesting that you blow off volunteering projects entirely, but I will tell you to prioritize your time. Figure out what the most important events are in your life, and focus on those first. Then you can use whatever time you have left for volunteering or just taking it easy. If you start skipping work or school just to volunteer, you aren’t going to go very far in life. Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices in order to see total success.

Take a Break

If you continue to push yourself beyond your breaking point, you will eventually explode. Then you won’t want to do anything for anyone, which won’t help matters at all. If you need to take a week off from volunteering just to relax, you can do that. That will give you a chance to get refreshed and come back to the effort in full swing. You may think you are letting people down this way, but those people want to make sure that you are okay too. If that means that you have to step away from a project for a little bit, so be it.

Think Logically

You need to think about the big picture with over volunteering. If you devote a lot of yourself to a few select projects, you are going to make a bigger impact than devoting a little bit to a lot of projects. Would you rather feed all the animals in the zoo one piece of bread or feed one family a full loaf? The answer should be the loaf because the single pieces will leave the other animals hungry for more. There are other people around to feed them. You just need to take care of a select amount of tasks that you think you can handle.

At the end of the day, you just have to remember that you are one person – one person only. There is some power in that, but not as much as you probably want there to be. Rather than stretching yourself thin, figure out what you are passionate about and go for it. You will be able to change the world a lot easier that way – I promise.

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by jmontalvo

Habitat for Humanity is an organization that builds homes for low-income families to provide them with a safe place to live. The organization used to actually give out the homes to these families, but now it usually sells them the properties for less than what the homes may actually be worth. I have heard of some sectors that rent out the homes to families as well, so the process really depends on where you are throughout the country.

Regardless of how your Habitat for Humanity is set up, you can volunteer to help out with the building efforts. I did this for a number of years, and I loved every moment of it. I got a chance to get my hands dirty, learn about construction, and help other people get a fresh start. I have no complaints about that. Here is a look at just some of the many adventures I had with Habitat for Humanity so you can look forward to something in the future.

Painting Trim

One of the first projects I had with Habitat for Humanity was painting wood trim to go in the houses. This prevented the builders form having to paint all of it when they actually installed it into the homes. They just had to touch up whatever we may have missed. My friends and I had a little station setup at the Habitat headquarters in our town, and we would lay out a bunch of trim to paint one by one. We probably painted a good 500 pieces of it over the course of a month or two, and that was just with us working weekends. Who knows what we could have done if we worked every day on it.

Designing the Sign

We had the opportunity to design and paint the sign on the outside of the office, which was probably my favorite part of the whole experience. I was the one to actually come up with the design, which included the location, logo, and motto for Habitat. I love design, so I was more than willing to take on the challenge. We spent about a month getting the stencils for the sign and doing everything else along those lines, but eventually, it was up on the wall as pure perfection.

Laying Concrete

Most of the time, we would work in the office on projects. That was just where they needed us the most. However, there were a few times we would go out on the site to work. In one of these events, I actually got to help lay the concrete foundation for a home, which was a really interesting experience. I got to lay out the reinforcement bars in the ground, and I got to help flatten down the concrete too. The process was a big eye opener for me, and it was a lot of hard work. I can’t imagine what those guys go through to do it every day.

Hanging up Drywall

This was the project that made me feel like a true badass working with Habitat for Humanity. I got to hang up drywall in a house. Little old 5’2″ tall me got to go up on a ladder and hang drywall two stories in the air. It was a pretty crazy project, but it really made me feel like I was doing something for the home, something far more significant than painting trim. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

If you think you would want to go on similar adventures in your community, contact your local Habitat for Humanity for information about you can help out. You may be able to use this experience to get left-handed scholarships in the near future.

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by jmontalvo

Your kids are your life. Your life is your kids. Where, in this fine mixture, does the world get mixed up?

Learning to work around the hustle of life can significantly impact how you handle situations at home. For parents who went to school on how to become an elementary school teacher, this can be even harder because they are around kids all the time. High school teachers and aids find it difficult to have the time for everyone in their life too. Though kids are a wonderful addition to the way our lives are consumed, they can be stressful and cause significant anger issues.

Teaching your children to work with you can be helpful. You know that your job is already a pain, stressful, and nine times out of ten is not the dream job of a lifetime. Parents who have the most cushioned of jobs worked hard to get there, normally leaving people behind them. Unfortunately, this can include their own families, causing harsh mental anguish between the parent and the child.

Having your kids “help” you may make a difference. Architects can have their kids draw next to them, while lawyers can have kids read books while they research cases. Teachers can “test” experiments with their kids, even if the “test” is to see if it will work in the classroom. Kindergarten or preschool teachers can have their older children put together classroom kits, such as boxes of crayons, coloring pages, or similar toys. High school teachers can learn how to relate to their teens by the actions of other teens.

When it comes time, children grow up and move out of their parents’ homes. This is the time when you realize what you missed out, what you could have done, and time that you cannot buy back. But understand that this is not the time to regret, but to reflect on what you have taught your kids, knowing that you did your best by them. This is the time that it takes for parents to hope that they did the right thing, that their kids will be the best they can be, and that no matter what, their kids know that they love them.

Work hard, play harder, and remember that though life is short, it is also the longest thing you will ever do. Make the best of it today to have a better tomorrow.

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by jmontalvo

Working around kids can be tough. When schedules collide, moms and dads can find themselves stressed beyond recognition. Instructors find themselves in difficult situations as their careers in education become a lifetime of stress, frustration and reward.

Small children can be hard to work with when trying to simply study for an exam or do research for an intense paper. Students who have difficulties already in school can find that time management is completely out of their control, as well their concentration. More often than not, these students will drop out of school seeing it as a time in their lives that simply is not ready for a secondary education.

Teens can be easier to work with. Between social media websites, texting, phones, apps, friends, sports, and whatever they can find themselves involved in, teenagers and early adolescents are busier than we ever were three decades ago. As a parent, your own homework may coincide with what your teen has to do. Sometimes, they may even be able to reverse the roles and help you with your homework instead of you looking at theirs like it was another language.

Algebra, social studies, even English classes can be difficult. Working with grammar and sentence structure may be difficult now, but as an adult you already know what you’re doing. Imagine the three year old who is still learning to put sentences together, repeating what they hear, and going “with the flow”. Working with your toddler as you remember how to put together a well structured sentence helps you, helps them, and creates extra bonding time with them.

As you begin your college life, remember that everything around you is an opportunity to learn. It is equally an opportunity to open up to your family, creating an environment of bonding and liveliness that didn’t seem to exist before. Children are essential to life, even if it means having them help you along the way.

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