To volunteer in a consistent manner, one needs to guard against burn out. That means the positives must out weigh the negatives over time.
Years back, I was encouraged by others to pick up road litter in my neighborhood. There was plenty of it! In fact that was one of the problems. I quickly collected far more litter than would fit in our household garbage can which was picked up once a week. Taking it to the local trash transfer service was way to expensive.
Another problem was the plastic bags I could purchase were to fragile for picking up road litter. They ripped and tore and simply would not safely hold the litter. The county adopt-a-road program which supplied litter bags was not practical for me at the time so, I gave up on patrolling for road litter.
After I retired, I needed more exercise and turned to patrolling for litter again. I contacted my county councilman and he arranged for me to get strong litter bags through him and for the county to pick up and dispose of the litter. I still was unwilling to join the impractical adopt-a-road program, but the negative issues I had faced before were overcome and I started to patrol for litter on a regular basis.
If the person that was encouraging people to pick up litter had addressed these and other problems in the first place, that person may have been more successful. This is what I did, when I eventually created EnviroCorps. Because the negatives were addressed, the positives have out weighed the negatives and I and other volunteer are regularly picking up road litter.
How have you addressed negative problems when volunteering?
Years back, I was encouraged by others to pick up road litter in my neighborhood. There was plenty of it! In fact that was one of the problems. I quickly collected far more litter than would fit in our household garbage can which was picked up once a week. Taking it to the local trash transfer service was way to expensive.
Another problem was the plastic bags I could purchase were to fragile for picking up road litter. They ripped and tore and simply would not safely hold the litter. The county adopt-a-road program which supplied litter bags was not practical for me at the time so, I gave up on patrolling for road litter.
After I retired, I needed more exercise and turned to patrolling for litter again. I contacted my county councilman and he arranged for me to get strong litter bags through him and for the county to pick up and dispose of the litter. I still was unwilling to join the impractical adopt-a-road program, but the negative issues I had faced before were overcome and I started to patrol for litter on a regular basis.
If the person that was encouraging people to pick up litter had addressed these and other problems in the first place, that person may have been more successful. This is what I did, when I eventually created EnviroCorps. Because the negatives were addressed, the positives have out weighed the negatives and I and other volunteer are regularly picking up road litter.
How have you addressed negative problems when volunteering?
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