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Our Thanks to Volunteers


This week we have been celebrating National Volunteer Week. April 15-21 has been a time to honor not only our RSVP Volunteers but all volunteers in our communities. The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program was blessed with help from Thrivent Financial grant through Dave Hinkle to help us give generously to others this week. Staff got to deliver pizza lunches for some dedicated volunteers throughout our community. We even had the opportunity to share more about Thrivent Financial by giving T-shirts to random volunteers and thanking them for lending their time, talents, and voices that help to make a big difference in our community.

 

In addition to pizza delivery RSVP staff were honored to attend the Governor’s Volunteer Service Awards on April 18th where we watched as one of our very own RSVP volunteers Alice Bray received the East Central Illinois Volunteer Service Award in the Senior Corps category for her hard work and dedication to Dove’s Children’s Clothing Room.  Alice has served in a wide variety of service opportunities from soup kitchens to board membership to train engineer at Forsyth mall. In October 2004 Alice began her journey at the Dove's Children's Clothing Room because there was such a need for families with children to have access to suitable clothing. Children's clothing is expensive, and children grow so fast. Alice states that she wishes there had been such a thing for her family when she was growing up as well. By January of 2007, Alice was asked to complete the monthly scheduling for the volunteers serving in the Clothing Room. Alice completed the scheduling of all volunteers for more than ten years before graciously handing it over to the next generation of volunteers who will follow Alice's footsteps of service to the Children's Clothing Room to ensure its availability to families for generations to come.

 

So far, this fiscal year RSVP volunteers have already logged and reported more than 47,000 service hours.  The Independent Sector values a volunteer’s time at $26.02 per hour, giving those hours a value of over 1.2 million dollars and our year is not over yet. Volunteers selfless giving and the impact of their time is irreplaceable to Dove, to RSVP, and to our community. To that, we say THANK YOU!

 

Charlie Gillaspie

RSVP Director



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