From the Desk of a Volunteer...

by Mary Z.

   Volunteering is loving people in action by doing good to others. It is treating others through your work, like you would like to be treated. It is like giving to others at Christmas time and through-out the rest of the year.

   It is offering others a piece of yourself and they in turn give to you. It is feeling good about the world so big, for part of it is a small world inside of you.

   And last of all, a thought by Lydia Smith, my best girl friend, ... "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" ( John F. Kennedy)

   I have been volunteering most of my adult life, because when I became ill with Schizophrenia on top of Cerebral Palsy, I said to myself that I would give back to the people that sent me flowers and letters from all over.

Copyright NEOCH and the Homeless Grapevine published July 1998 Cleveland Ohio