It Is Not Too Late to Do Good
By Jim Brescia, Board Member
Serve Pickens
I am embarrassed to say that I often put off doing volunteer community work to spend more time on me. I convince myself that whatever I am doing is very important. Sometimes I am attending to something important but often, whatever I am working on could wait.
Over many decades I have created stock reasons for not volunteering. I am too busy, or too tired, or too sick. I decide not to volunteer and then I backfill one of my tried-and-true excuses.
Then I watch the news on television and shake my head over the lack of citizens who are willing to meet the needs of their community.
I proudly serve on the Board of Serve Pickens. About a week ago, amid exhorting people and organizations to join our one-and-done community volunteering opportunity, I realized that my wife and I had not yet gone to the website to register.
This is not the only time that I have witnessed someone doing something of which I disapproved only to realize that I was looking into a mirror!
Serve Pickens is an opportunity for people to choose the type of volunteer work they want to do and the organization for which they want to do it. This is the fourth year for this program but the window of opportunity is lowering and will soon close.
The idea is that individuals or teams will sign up to volunteer for one day at one of our local non-profits. It is hoped this will generate a greater sense of community in Pickens County and generate more volunteers and donations long-term for our non-profits.
Participation is a one and done commitment. Volunteers will not be asked to volunteer again for a year! It is a perfect opportunity for those who want to help their community but cannot make a reoccurring commitment.
Last year, 153 volunteers worked on projects for 18 different non-profits. This year the Serve Pickens event is on Saturday, October 18th.
Anyone interested can go to servepickens.com to review the projects and volunteer.
The project is on Facebook as Serve Pickens. There are many non-profits already committed to the day and the list is growing. But there are still requests from non-profit organizations that are short of the necessary number of volunteers
