
WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): Monday is the annual observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Here in Memphis a weekend-long event called "Days of Service" invites locals to help with a variety of volunteer efforts — a way of giving back to the community. One group steering potential volunteers to a good fit activity is called Volunteer Odyssey. Their website is volunteerodyssey.com with us now is the group's president and CEO Caroline Norris. Thank you for joining us.
CAROLINE NORRIS: Hi, thanks for having me. I love talking about how much good is happening in our city, so I'm grateful for the opportunity.
BLANK: Great! Well, first off, Caroline, give us a few examples of volunteer opportunities people can sign up for this year.
NORRIS: Our nonprofit partners, they need consistent help every week. But events like celebrating Dr. King's birthday is a great way to remind people to kind of reset and invest in our community. And whatever your calendar looks like we've got an opportunity for you. Wolf River Conservancy is putting together a trail maintenance and invasive species clean-up down at T.O Fuller Park on Saturday. They need hundreds of volunteers. So, if you've got some gloves, they'll provide the rest. Overton Park also has some maintenance that they're hoping to get some help on one of the trails that got some damage in the last storm that we had. And so that's on Monday. Thistle and Bee, they are opening up a new clinic for their clients. And so they're hoping that you might have some time to help clean up that space and paint the walls and make it really beautiful and inviting to they can open that soon.
BLANK: There's a lot of different things, obviously, going on across the city. What's the process? Is there an application for people to sign up?
NORRIS: So for this weekend, because it's mostly rolling your sleeves up, getting your hands dirty, there isn't an application. You don't have to have any specific skills or go through any long drawn-out process. If you go to volunteerodyssey.com, you can see which one of those opportunities best meets where you want to go and the timeframe that you're looking for. And you can register right there.
BLANK: In Memphis, you really can't leave your house without running into something that is maintained or was created by some charity or non-profit. How would you describe the role — or maybe — the impact of volunteerism in the Mid-South?
BLANK: Many of our nonprofit partners, they need the people-power of volunteers. They can't accomplish their missions without them. But they're so busy working on that direct service on the day-to-day mission work that they may not have the time or capacity or marketing power to be able to find the volunteers that are ready to do the work to raise their hand. And so ,to bridge that gap and so that you can sort and filter: right on our website choose the day that works for you, or choose the skill set that you want to offer or the cause that most closely aligns with what you're passionate about — or just find that day and time and then figure out what your next true passion is. There is so much need and there's so much work to be done. I feel like you can find whatever it is that's going to get you out of the bed. It's going to do a great thing for our city.