Giving Back....

The first two Saturdays of January I was very happy to be able to do some volunteer work with Planned Parenthood and Reading to Kids.

1. Planned Parenthood

I vounteered with Plan Parenthood's outreach program. I thought I would be going door to door, knocking on doors and trying to talk to people about Planned Parenthood. As nerve racking as this can be there was actually a more simplier method of outreach, however it still took me door to door.
The meeting area Saturday morning was the Santa Monica Library. It was very confusing finding the room that we were suppose to meet in, but luckily I was able to call the person in charge for information, and with a little more information from the librain my friend and I were able to find our way to the room full of volunteers.
PP was gracious enough to provide breakfast and after chowing down we started our introduction.
I was very pleased to see that the day was planned out to the tee, and we were given plenty of advice to take on our volunteer journey. Our task was pick a nieghbor on the maps we were given and go door to door putting door handling with the information about Parenthood's new clinic in Santa Monica. A very simple task, minus avoiding the houses with dogs guarding them. But PP taught us how to deal with those.
When we went out on our journey, we got a little lost, mostly because I'm not every good at reading maps, but we finally made it. Our goal, as mentioned in the introduction was about 100 flyers per volunteer.
I must say it was fun taking a tour down the streets of Santa Monica and enjoying all the unique houses. Definitely a simple and effect way to communicate.

2. Reading to Kids
Reading to kids takes place at several different elementary schools in the Los Angeles county. The school I volunteered at was Los Angeles Elementary school. As a first time volunteer I sat through a very welcoming introduction and was paired with a partner. Each pair a volunteers was given a book, the same book for each grade level, with the task of reading the book out loud to the children. After we were done reading the book the children would do a craft based on the story that was just read to them.
When we finally started, my partner and I had a very small group of four children. Eager but shy the children

listened attentively and were slow to answer the questions we asked about the story. After we finished the book the children started their craft. It was great seeing the children's creativity through the crafts. My favorite part of the experience was giving the children their very own book to take home. It warmed my heart to see one of the children trying to walk and read their book as we finished up the volunteer session.


For more on the organizations or to volunteer with them visit
www.plannedparenthood.org
www.readingtokids.org