Volunteering With Mom

For Mother’s Day, I want to share a story from way back in the fall of 1996 when I was living in Virginia Beach.  At the time, I was serving as a Lt. Governor on the Capital District Key Club Board.  As young leaders, we were empowered to create volunteering opportunities for the high school students in each of the Key Clubs we oversaw.  Throughout the year, we participated in several successful projects like a food drive and making holiday cards for children at a local hospital.  Though the projects were focused on high school volunteers, one of the most rewarding projects quickly evolved into a large-scale opportunity that was a bonding experience between me and my mom. 

The concept started out simple enough:  collect toiletries for Union Mission, a local shelter.  Volunteers would collect things like hotel size soap, travel size shampoo, toothpaste, and toothbrushes.  We would meet in the parking lot of a local restaurant and I’d throw everything into my little Ford Probe and drop it off at the shelter.

In discussing the idea with my mom one day when we were driving around near the Oceanfront, we had an idea.  Hotels at the beach were in the process of cleaning up from the summer and many would be shutting down for the winter.  Why not ask those hotels if they had anything to donate?  The day we came up with the idea, we went to a few hotels.  Some said “no,” some gave us a bag of soaps and shampoos on the spot, and some asked for a written request.

I went home and typed a letter to every hotel along the Oceanfront for the same thing – anything they could donate, whether it was toiletries, pillows, or blankets.  I knew that Union Mission could accept almost anything they would give us and I wasn’t afraid to ask for it.  In the letter, I wrote that I would follow up by phone call and set a date that I’d be back to collect donations.  The letters went in the mail and I waited anxiously for a few days to pass so that I could start making calls.  I’m not sure if we had unlimited phone calls at home during this time, but my mom never let on that my “small” project was costing us a small fortune in administrative costs.

Going back to the Oceanfront hotels, my mom drove and I ran in to collect the donations.  I don’t think I left a single hotel empty-handed, even if it was just enough to fill my hands that I carried out.  As we moved farther down Atlantic Avenue, the excitement was building.  One hotel gave us loads of pillows and blankets.  Another was changing their branding and gave us their entire inventory of toiletries, pens, matches, plastic cups, and everything else that had the old logo.  It was amazing.  Ultimately, my mom and I had to drive back to the Oceanfront four times to collect the amount of donations that were pouring out at us. 

When I look back at the reasons why I love to volunteer, this experience is one that stands out.  I will always treasure the time I shared with my mom and the fact that she believed in the project and was willing to give the little free time she had to make it happen.  I can honestly say that I didn’t fully appreciate her contributions back then.  It’s only as an adult that I understand that “free time’ doesn’t really exist, that it’s expensive to fill up your gas tank and drive back and forth all over town, and that listening to someone go on and on about the same thing for weeks must have made her crazy!

But, something I learned and carry with me to this day is that it’s important to give back, to dream big (and then figure out how to dream bigger), and then to follow-through.  Groups like Union Mission still need help and there are still individuals (and hotels and businesses) out there willing to help out. 

If you’re inspired – and I hope you are – here are some groups in the DC Metro area that will gladly accept donations: 

• Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN) 
• Doorways for Women and Families 
• Calvary Women’s Services 

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mother’s out there, especially mine!  Happy Mother's Day to my mother-in-law, Ellen, too!