[Volunteers] OVP Weekly Volunteer Opportunity E-mail (3/15/04)

[Brian Stephen Dubina]

Good Morning!

Table of Contents:

1.  Special Olympics Swim meet – Urbana Indoor Aquatics Center
2.  Keep Library Materials Functional – Champaign Public Library
3.  Share Your Cooking Skills – Provena Behavioral Health
4.  That Dorm Room Garden Not Working right? – CWIT 
5.  Carnival – Carrie Busey Elementary School
6.  Tech Support – Matthew House
7.  Bike-A-Thon Coordinator – St. Jude Children’s Hospital
8.  Bocce Ball Coach – C-U Special Recreation
9.  Champaign-Urbana Family Week 2004
10. Children’s Museum chaperones needed – C-U Special Recreation
***

1.  The Urbana Indoor Aquatics Center will be hosting the Area 8 Special 
Olympics Swim competition.  Volunteers are needed to help with the event, 
including registration, time keeping, and concessions.    The event takes 
place on March 27th from 9am to 4pm.  Two hour shifts will rotate throughout 
the day.  Contact Ellen with the Urbana Park District at 367-1536 or 
erkirsanoff at urbanaparks.org or Georgeann Kulton with Special Olympics at 
217-355-1750 or gkulton at soill.org.

2.  Volunteers will improve the appearance of the library collections by 
relabeling and recovering books. Evaluate the condition of books in a 
specified collection to determine whether relabeling or recovering is needed. 
Apply labels and label protectors to books. Apply Mylar dust jackets to books. 
They can also use the Azuradisc DVD/CD repair machine.  The volunteer will 
repair scratched and damaged DVDs. Evaluate the condition of the DVDs/CDs and 
their packaging to help determine whether further repair or replacement are 
needed.  Contact Judie Christensen at 403-2076

3.  Share your love of cooking! Prepare a meal for a Healthy Young Families 
support group! Volunteers prepare a meal in their home, and drop it off at the 
group meeting site. A wonderful opportunity for a large group who would like 
to volunteer together.  Contact Anna Langford at 
alangford at provenabehavioralhealth.org or 398-8080 for more information.

4.  The Center for Women in Transition (CWIT) would like to create small 
garden plots to grow flowers and vegetables. We want to make this an 
educational experience for the women and children. Please apply by early 
spring.  Contact John Phillips at 352-7151 if you want to get down and dirty . 
. . in the garden.

5.  Carrie Busey Elementary School is in need of volunteers for our elementary 
school carnival.  It is a night of great fun for our students from 
Kindergarten to 5th grade. Our greatest need is for volunteers to run the 
various games (collect tickets, explain game, paint faces, and distribute 
prizes).  We could really use 30 volunteers if possible.  The carnival is on 
Friday, April 2 from 5-8 at Carrie Busey Elementary School 1605 W. Kirby Ave. 
Champaign For more information contact Lisa Akins PTA Carnival Coordinator 
359-6023 (home) or lisa at akins.ws (home email)

6.  Mathew house, a long-term, intensive mentoring for high risk children, 
needs a volunteer to help maintain the Matthew House Website 
(http://www.matthewhouse.org/), provide support for the office computers and 
the 15 computers used by the children in the Godparent Home Mission.  If you 
are interested, contact Jenny Marck at 239-7377.

7.  St. Jude’s is looking for a volunteer to help coordinate a Bike-A-Thon.  
No experience is necessary.  If you are looking for something new and 
interesting to try, this is it.  For more information contact Thomas Payne at 
1800-457-2444 between 4pm and 9pm.

8.  Assist Special Olympics athletes play bocce. Bocce is similar to lawn 
bowling. Volunteers can help the athletes take turns, help measure the 
distance of each player's bocce ball to help determine the winner, and help 
encourage and cheer on the players. Meets Mondays from 4:30 - 5:30 at Eisner 
Park, which borders the Hays Center at 1311 W. Church. Runs every Monday 
through May 10.  Contact Kathy Stiebner at 398-2374 or 
kathy.stiebner at cparkdistrict.com.

9.  C-U Family Week is bipartisan, collaborative effort between students and 
community members to organize a weeklong series of events highlighting family 
life in our local community. We aspire for the week to help unify our 
community in a project we can potentially 'all work on.' We are currently 
urgently seeking volunteer support for two aims: a) staging a small-scale 
pilot of Family Week this April 18th-24th in one local neighborhood (Garden 
Park on North Neil Street) and b) laying groundwork towards a larger-scale 
community event later this November (one week before Thanksgiving). We would 
be thrilled for help on any of seven subcommittees focused on each of the days 
of the week [Family Night-In/Parent Night-Out/Family Heritage Day/Family 
Neighborhood Day, etc--see www.cufamilyweek.tk for more information]. Contact 
Jacob with questions or interest (jzhess at uiuc.edu, 766-2471 cell). Thank you!

10.  Want to visit the Indianapolis Children's Museum with our Day Campers? 
It's a very hands-on museum and we could use your assistance helping our 
campers get the most from their visit. Come with us and experience the museum 
through the eyes of school aged children. We would like to have 5 volunteers 
this day to have a 1 on 1 staff/day camper ratio to ensure all campers get the 
most of their experience. We will all meet at 8:30 at Springer Rec Center and 
travel together to Indy on buses. We will return to Spalding around 5:00. We 
would love to have you join us!  For more information contact Kathy Stiebner 
at 398-3274 or at kathy.stiebner at cparkdistrict.com


Thirsting for other volunteer opportunities? Check out www.cuvolunteer.org
for 250+ others.

Tell them the Office of Volunteer Programs sent you,

--Sascha Meinrath & Brian Dubina
Office of Volunteer Programs

Phone#: 333-7424
E-mail: ovp at uiuc.edu
Office: 277 Illini Union (in the RSO complex)
Website: www.union.uiuc.edu/ovp