Project Volunteerism

I joined in on some more volunteer time with my coworkers at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT.  We got to spend a gorgeous afternoon amongst a beautifully vast acreage.  You may recall recently that a bunch of us took half a day to clean up the riverside in an urban area where we hauled out approximately 12 tons of trash.  This time, we tackled weeding, painting, and brass polishing.  I chose weeding. It’s my thing.

Some smaller groups dispersed to perform some painting and polishing chores.  Some performed various duties in the library.  Others worked in the boat – yes, the boat that’s parked on the grounds.  “Parked” might not be an appropriate nautical term, but boats are not my thing.  You get the idea.

Our overall group consisted of people working at every level in our department, including our chief HR officer.  That’s saying something.  It’s one thing to encourage us to take advantage of company paid volunteer time; it’s another thing to feel like the company truly supports it by walking the talk.  I’m crazy busy right now and could’ve used every hour of the five volunteer hours on work, but if my chief HR officer and other members of the senior leadership team can spend the time detached from their phones, then so can I. 

We weeded, we talked, and we got to know each other a little bit more than we did a few hours before.  Titles seem to dissolve when we all jump into a project like this.  I got to talk running with Jackie, who does a fair share of triathlons, road races, and century rides.  She also participated in Reach The Beach Relay this past weekend, so it was fun to hear her experience and compare to mine of several years ago.  I got to hear stories from Hillary, who just welcomed a 6 wk old chocolate Labrador puppy to her family.  Notice the trend?  No mention of work.  At all.  Nice.    

And we got instant gratification as we saw our hard work resulting in –

Our reward?  Well, other than the satisfaction that we did good work for someone other than ourselves….

A ride on their carousel of course!

Good day.