When was the last time YOU volunteered? Not lately I suppose. Well, volunteering is a very wonderful thing. Giving your time to help another person, or cause is what you're doing when you volunteer. You're probably sitting here thinking "What the hell? This is gay, I'm leaving!" or somin' like that. WELL DON'T LEAVE YET! I believe volunteering is a great thing that more of us need to get into. There are many ways to volunteer, and they can be a one-time opportunity or on-going. Well, if you're still thinking about leaving at least leave by one of the links below. Below, are a couple of links listed on how you can volunteer.

WWW.THEHUNGERSITE.COM ~ This only takes a second. Literally. After you get to the site, you will see a map of the world, and a button below it. The map has a flashing country, representing a death caused by hunger. All you have to do is click that button below the map, and you are donating food to a hungry person for FREE. The site's sponsors pay for the food to feed a hungry person in another country. Your job is to click that button one time every day. It's so simple, and helpful. Try and go there everday!

WWW.VOLUNTEERMATCH.ORG ~ Go here to find SEVERAL volunteering opportunities in your area. All you do is enter your zip code, how far you're willing to travel, when you want to volunteer, and a category. I have used this many times, and this site comes up with some very good opportunities to volunteer. Come on, give it a try!

Here are some ways you can help, without having to go to a website: NICKELODEON'S "THE BIG HELP"
This is something many of you are probably already familiar with...and that's GREAT! The Big Help promotes volunteering amond children and teens. In October, Nickelodeon host the BigHelp-athon, where kids and teens can call in to a toll free number, and devote a certain amount of hours of help. The current theme for 1999 is "It's a Park Thing." This focuses on cleaning up parks, building, maintaining, and re-equipping parks. Find out how you can help in your local park! You can contact The Big Help here:

The Big Help
Box 929
New York, NY 10108

By Phone: (212) 258-7080

HOW CAN I VOLUNTEER?
Well, you can start by going to www.thehungersite.com and give a simple click to donate a serving of food to a hungry person in another country! Offline, you can do things such as:
Read to a child
Visit the elderly
Tutor a younger child
Give blood or plasma
Clean up trash in your park, neighborhood, school, etc.
Those are just a few of many ways. Go to www.volunteermatch.org to find more ways to volunteer in your area.

I have volunteered quite a few times in my life. One year, for Nickelodeon's BIG HELP, me, my mom, brother, and a few of my friends went and picked up trash around the high school. This was a time when our high school had open-campus lunches. There were McDonalds, Hardees, and Burger King cups, bags and trash EVERYWHERE. It took us over 5 hours to clean most of it up. It felt good though, to know we helped out. The high school custodians thanked us, and it was pretty cool. Man, that was a long time ago. I've also helped out at a festival held by a local radio station. It was at Eagle Creek park and I helped with pumpkin painting, hay rides, and I even got to dress up in a bear suit and hug little kids. WHOHOO! It was fun. One last experience I'd like to share with you is one the entire '02 class did in 8th grade. We got a grant from Youth As Resources to clean up our local park. We painted all the fences and posts, and equipment, cleaned up trash, and scraped bird poop off of the fences (fun fun..). After our work was finished, it looked so nice and we were pretty happy with it.

I hope this page motivates you to volunteer. I think you should volunteer at least ONCE in your life. It is so worth it. If you have any volunteering stories you'd like me to post here, e-mail me! Also, if you're very interested and would like some help or have any questions on volunteering, you can e-mail me for that too. I'd be glad to help- AgentGirl007@hotmail.com.