Book Description

Coordinate volunteers with all the facts about them at your fingertips and develop meaningful reports on volunteer accomplishments.This book is a step-by-step guide to the basic elements of a volunteer recordkeeping system.Includes application forms, volunteer fact files, assignment logs, time and activity reports.Lots of sample forms and ideas for documenting hard-to-track activities. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

One Great Book
This is an awesome book. I read it for a research paper, and the author is really compassionate about what he writes. I'd reccomend it to anyone, really. It deserves much more recognition than it ever got. Ethopia and it's people are so interesting, and Skelton's description of his exspieriences are captivating. Read it if you got it, and if you don't got it get it!

Life in Ethiopia, Africa in the 70s
VOLUNTEERING IN ETHIOPIA provides valuable insights into understanding and appreciating the African people of this country.

This book focuses on the Peace Corps experiences of Group XIV in Ethiopia in the early 1970s.

The author, who is now an international lawyer, vividly describes their volunteer experiences in this African country, which range from the challenges of dealing with cultural shock and personal rejection to the joys of finding meaningful and fulfilling contributions.

The book truly tells about life in this country at this time with honesty and integrity. ... Read more

Book Description

"Interesting, captivating, thought-provoking. Thomsen's explanations and examples of service learning show us that students can engage in higher and more complex thinking skills while they serve others,address learning standards, meet the expectations of the currivulum and —oh, by the way—find out that school can be fun!"
—Dr. Richard Castallo, Chair
Deparment of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies
California State University Northridge

"Teachers and site administrators will find their "how" and "why" questions answered in this inspirational and motivational book. The research behind the efficacy of service learning is a highlight of the book. In addition, it contains plenty of complete, useful examples of service learning projects for those educators who don't want to invent their own. Kate Thomsen's book is a great addition to the conversation on community learning!"
-Neal A. Glasgow, Educator/Author

"Service Learning is a compelling work which addresses a universal need often overlooked in school curricula-the need to practice compassion and generosity. Kate Thomsen provides eudcators with a practical handbook for teaching wisdom and empathy along with math, language arts, social studies, and science. This book is a testament to our faith in the promise of all of our children, and in the capacity of teachers to transform lives through thoughtful instruction and example."
-Lauri Pepe Bousquet, Professor of Education, LeMoyne College, Syracuse, NY

Kate Thomsen wrote about the power of service learning to promote resiliency in her book Building Resilient Students. In Service Learning in Grades K-8, she explores in greater depth the positive effects of service learning on youth, different types of successful programs, and how to start a service learning program.

Service learning—making community service part of the school's educational program—can be used at all grade levels; however, some high schools require that students earn a certain number of credits in service learning in order to graduate. One type of service learning program is curriculum related and tied directly to what the students are learning in school. For example, students may work on a beach cleanup during an oceanography unit. In another type of program, students are required to serve the community for a set number of hours, for example working at a homeless shelter, retirement community, hospital, or animal shelter. In this case, the students may reflect on their experiences through a journal or paper, but the program is not connected to a class or specific curriculum.

... Read more

Book Description

This wonderful narrative recounts the history of the libraries on the Tiburon Peninsula and the ten years of dedicated work by visionaries who saw the building of the new library as a necessary element for the community. Aside from fund-raising, volunteers committed long hours to locating a site, choosing an architectural firm, drawing up wish lists, conducting a national search for a library director, ensuring that the children’s room be a happy place and user friendly, and learning of future Internet connection systems, all while keeping the donating public excited with the progress by publishing a newsletter, now used to inform the public of the library’s book additions, news, and programs.

The result is a warm and charming, as well as state of the art, building that was built with generous donations, fund-raisers as simple as bake stands and as elegant as catered dinners, and committees composed of citizens who used all of their professional and social skills to oversee the project to completion and on to ensuring that future library funding continued. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Community engagement in building a living democracy
This is a compelling read for anyone concerned about making democracy work to the benefit of their entire community. First a Dream tells the heartwarming and instructive story of how the people of Belevedere and Tiburon in Calfornia's Marin County dared to believe that they could build cooperatively a grass-roots community library that reflects and serves their diverse population in extraordinary ways. It is heartwarming to read how their community library, serving two quite different towns, engages and invigorates a remarkable number of their citizens in reading, the arts, and community improvement projects. It is instructive to see what it takes to build such a learning community into the roots of a society: a vision, extraordinary commitment and perserverence, flexibility, imagination and time.

This is one of the better guides I have seen on how constructively to involve an entire community in building its own living democracy. There are exciting and useful lessons here for anyone who is ready to engage in strengthening their neighborhood, town or society.

A True Study in Community
It is my good fortune to be the Director of the Belvedere-Tiburon Library, an independent community library created by the citizens of two adjoining municipalities in southern Marin County, California chronicled in "First a Dream". I am very proud of "First a Dream: A Community Builds a Library" and grateful to the people who made it possible. It is the inspirational and instructive story of the development of the library which opened its doors in April, 1997. It is also a study in community-building, local values, public spirit, and long-term commitment. The residents of the communities came together in thought, experience, and action to fill a need they both shared and worked together to finance, build and operate a new library. To achieve this, more than ten years of volunteer time and effort were given by hundreds of people.

The library is a partnership of the two municipalities and reflective and representative of both. It is a community gateway and cultural center, a place of shared responsibilities and benefits. Today there are more than two hundred residents serving on twenty+ committees and each is vested in maintaining the excellence of this library. In creating their own library, the citizens of Tiburon and Belvedere demonstrated something basic and good about people and communities, about social democracy and its power and glory. It shows that local community activists can take matters into their own hands and achieve something remarkable.

Congratulations and thanks to author Jo Ann Ridley for telling this story with such attention to detail, warmth, and enthusiasm. Thanks to artist and architect James Mallott for his beautiful illustrations and his remarkable generosity. Thanks to Dr. Kevin Starr, California State Librarian, for his eloquent foreword. Thanks to Sharon Jones of Vision Books International, the book's publisher and guiding light. Thanks to all the people from the community who served on the Library's History Book Committee - Carol Forell, Allan Littmen, Barbara Gnoss, Joanne Horton, Robin Daily, Betty McKegney, Sharon Bass, Mary Falk, Marie Feldman, Margaret Jones, Barbara and Len Rogers, and Steve Silberstein. ... Read more

Book Description

Although welfare reform is currently the government's top priority, most discussions about the public's responsibility to the poor neglect an informed historical perspective. This important book provides a crucial examination of past attempts, both in this country and abroad, to balance the efforts of private charity and public welfare. The prominent historians in this collection demonstrate how solutions to poverty are functions of culture, religion, and politics, and how social provisions for the poor have evolved across the centuries. ... Read more

Book Description

One of the few studies of how the elderly help others through formal and informal volunteerism. While a large number of studies focus on the help older people receive from relatives and friends, this work examines the many ways in which older people are involved in giving care to others. Written by a sociologist and based on a stratified sample of hundreds of individuals, this study assesses a number of dimensions of care giving. While much of this labor goes unnoticed, it is central to the building and maintenance of family and community ties, and reveals ways in which social life is organized around aging, gender, and marriage. Patterns of formal volunteerism and informal care are studied in relation to age, sex, marital status, and other important variables that affect this essential but underplayed aspect of American community life. ... Read more

Book Description

In recent years, membership has dropped in traditional voluntary associations such as Rotary Clubs, Jaycees, and bowling leagues. At the same time, concern is rising about the growth of paramilitary and hate groups. Scholars have warned that these trends are undermining civic society by creating a dangerous number of isolated, mistrustful individuals and organized, antisocial renegades. In this provocative book, however, Nancy Rosenblum takes a new, less narrowly political approach to the study of groups. And she reaches more optimistic conclusions about the state of civil society.

Rosenblum argues that we should judge associations not only by what they do for civic virtue, but also by what they do for individual members. She shows that groups of all kinds--among them religious groups, corporations, homeowner associations, secret societies, racial and cultural identity groups, prayer groups, and even paramilitary groups--fill deep psychological and moral needs. And she contends that the failure to recognize this has contributed to an alarmist view of their social impact. For example, she argues that, although extremist groups have obvious antisocial aims, they constrain individuals who would be even more dangerous as maladjusted loners. And she examines the rapid growth of small "support groups"--which are usually dismissed as politically irrelevant--and shows that the moral support people find in such places as prayer groups and self-help groups helps to cultivate the social trust some scholars say is disappearing. Rosenblum concludes that, for practical and principled reasons, American democracy should permit expansive freedom of association, illustrating her case with discussion of specific cases in law.

Rosenblum recognizes, however, that freedom has a price. She reminds us that some groups have oppressive and even criminal tendencies, and she explores what liberal democracy should do to ensure that individuals also have freedom within associations and freedom to exit. Throughout, Rosenblum writes eloquently and with a powerful moral voice, drawing on law, practical politics, and psychology to produce an original political theory of the moral uses of pluralism. The book adds remarkable depth and subtlety to one of the leading subjects in contemporary social and political debate. ... Read more

Book Description

In the United States, philanthropic activity often enabled women to create parallel power structures that resembled, but rarely replicated, the commercial and political arenas of men. From nuns who managed charitable and educational institutions to political activists demanding an end to discriminatory practices against women and children, many of the women whose lives are documented in these pages claimed distinctive public roles through the nonprofit sphere. ... Read more

Book Description

This handy guide presents 101 ways to help others and yourself by volunteering. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Big Impact!
I must confess, I have not been able to read the book cover to cover because it is so touching my eyes keep tearing up and I have to stop. It is amazing what a difference one can make in the life of a child. The commitment is minimal, and the rewards are great. I have been a Big Sister for several years now, and it has really enriched my life (and my Little Sister's too, I hope!). I highly recommend reading this book if you have ever considered becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister, or if you have or know of a child you think might benefit from the program.

Super Book!!
This was a heart touching book. The stories on these pages will move you. I became a Big after thinking about it for some time...reading this book sealed the deal. It has changed my life and the life of a young boy only looking for some time and attention. I hope reading this book will encourge you to take an interest in our youth and make a Big Impact.

Great Book!
This is a fantastic book for those who are new Big Brothers/Sisters or for those thinking about doing so. The insight the author gives into the process of becoming one, as well as what impact it has on a boy's life is great. I just started as a Big Brotheer and keep referring back to it. ... Read more