50+ Lifestyles

April is Volunteer appreciation Month

By Becky Passman, CEO
Milestones Area Agency on Aging

April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes. But did you know that April is also Volunteer Appreciation Month? Just as the soft rains of April nourish the young seedlings and bring beautiful colorful blossoms in May, so too do volunteers provide valuable services and assistance to organizations such as Milestones Area Agency on Aging, helping them bloom and thrive. Across our seventeen-county service area, hundreds of wonderful people volunteer their time and talents to help the agency in one way or another, whether it be delivering meals to homebound older adults in the community, helping with office filing or print projects, assisting at a meal site, sharing information about agency programs at a health fair, or any number of other helpful tasks. We value our volunteers’ experience, talents, expertise, and – most of all – their generous spirits. As we like to say, “Volunteers help good works grow!”, and it is so true. For us, as with most nonprofits, the assistance of volunteers help to stretch every dollar that much further, enabling more meals and services to be provided, and more needs to be met.

Research shows that volunteering also brings many benefits to the volunteer. For example, a Corporation for National & Community Service report (http://www.nationalservice.gov/pdf/07_0506_hbr.pdf) noted that “volunteering leads to better health… those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do
not volunteer.” It can also help the volunteer build new skills or retain current ones and, most importantly, the knowledge that one’s efforts are helping others can bring a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction.

If you’re currently a volunteer, whether for the equivalent of an hour a month or several weeks in a year, thank you for caring and working to make a positive difference in your community. If you’re interested in volunteer opportunities, consider giving Milestones a call to explore the possibilities. As Muhammad Ali once said, “service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth”; we’d be very happy to assist you in getting your “rent payment” accumulated.