During National Volunteer Week, April 15-21, Interim recognizes the Our Voices Volunteers, a group that donates time and talents to support community connection through daily social activities. Interim has many volunteers who donate their precious time and talents to us! This month we would like to acknowledge one of our dedicated volunteer groups, the Our Voices Volunteers! The Our Voices Community Room is a gathering place intended to decrease community isolation by providing daily social activities like bingo, arts and crafts, board games, and other activities. While it is open to the community, it is mostly attended by our Monterey Peninsula housing residents. All of the activities are facilitated by the “volunteer of the day”. There are currently six dedicated volunteers.
Up until three years ago, the Our Voices program was primarily run by Interim staff. Volunteers were notified funding could no longer provide Interim staffing for the program. Our Voices participants committed to provide a group of volunteers to continue to open the room from Monday-Friday. They wanted to ensure the Interim community could maintain a location to gather and socialize. The original volunteers organized their resident council group and delegated a day for each person. The Our Voices volunteers are passionate about ensuring the community has a place to feel ‘safe’, ‘welcomed’, make friends, and build community. For those who may have challenges with trust, it can also be a stepping stone to additional services. Guests also learn healthy coping skills such as using arts, music and poetry to deal with symptoms. Guests report feeling comforted knowing there is a place to connect with peers who understand their daily struggles of living with a mental illness.
Having the program activities planned and organized by the volunteers has doubled participation.
Our Voices volunteer, Jack Endert, described his volunteer experiences. Health conditions limit some of his mobility, but not his spirit or sense of humor! He hopes to one day recover enough to go golfing again, one of his great loves. He jokes that at the annual volunteer appreciation banquet it took him so long to get up to get up from his chair to get his volunteer award, they assumed he wasn’t there and moved on to the next name. Jack has been volunteering for the Our Voices program for about two and a half years, and has volunteered for the agency for the past 15 years in various capacities.
He was on the original committee that helped organize programming for Interim’s OMNI Resource Center in Salinas. The OMNI Resource Center offers peer-led programs promoting wellness and recovery, as well as recreational and social opportunities. They met for about a year discussing how to organize and get the program off the ground. “The first month it opened there was only ONE PERSON”, he laughs, and waves a lone finger in the air. Ten years later, that program now averages approximately 50 guests a day. He says helping to get OMNI going was his ‘pride and joy’.
He remembers one guest of the OMNI Resource Center, who had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, that Interim was able to help. “All he could do was mumble to himself”, Jack says. He also didn’t want to talk to anyone or interact. But he kept coming back every day. Ultimately, Interim managed to get him an apartment in permanent housing and connected to services. Jack later ran into him in a local supermarket and found him completely transformed. “That was like the miracle you always wish for in clients, especially the difficult ones. For me that made it all worthwhile, that somebody could turn their life around, with Interim’s help.” He added that, “if nothing else ever happens I will have that.