Democracy Day Volunteers

Last Saturday I attended ICIRR’s Democracy Day at Benito Juarez High School in Chicago. Like many of ICIRR’s events, there was a lot of energy in the room with a packed agenda. There were 3 workshops on the Dream Memo in English, Spanish, and Polish, 1 on train the trainers, and a stakeholder meeting. Overall, it was a powerful event that discussed very importance topics, offered the opportunity to train others, and laid out the vision on the movement for the next several months.

As a full-time volunteer recruiter, I took some time at this event to observe ICIRR’s volunteer practice. I think my interest in this rose from that fact that many if not the majority of the volunteers were new. How is that ICIRR can depend on the efficiency of new volunteers for such important events? My guess is that every volunteer that comes to ICIRR, or an issue specific organization, is passionate and extremely committed.

How is this different from other volunteer opportunities? I don’t think it means people just volunteer for the sake of volunteering although we can differentiate those that want to build a specific skill. It is great how these volunteers take on big responsibilities immediately while in other opportunities we spend a lot of time doing trainings, following up, etc… I hope to find new ways to mix these two approaches on volunteerism as I continue this work.