CaliforniaVolunteers Launches Volunteer Campaign

Fed up with the commercialism of the holidays? Live in California and want to contribute to your community? CaliforniaVolunteers.org is launching a state-wide, grassroots campaign to increase the number of Californians volunteering in their communities. "We know many people want to help but don't know how," says Karen Baker, Executive Director of CaliforniaVolunteers.org, "we want to make sure every state resident knows how easy it is to find meaningful volunteer opportunities." During the holiday season, CaliforniaVolunteers wants Californians to volunteer in areas that address poverty, hunger, and homelessness.

According to a fact sheet provided by CaliforniaVolunteers, 4.6 million Californians, including 1.8 million children, live in poverty. Additionally, 4.3 Californians experience hunger and an estimated 350,000 are homeless. Food and shelter providers in California report that these numbers are increasing each year while federal funding to poverty and hunger programs in the state are declining or stagnating. These facts are fueling CaliforniaVolunteers' holiday season volunteer campaign. Baker reminds us, "The holidays can be an especially challenging time for families who lack the everyday necessities that many of us take for granted, and volunteering in any number of ways can make a difference."

CaliforniaVolunteers offers interested volunteers an online volunteer search engine which matches volunteers with organizations who need help. Interested Californians can find organizations that match their interests and are within their zip code or county. Long term, short term, and one time volunteer opportunities exist to meet any volunteer's time constraints. Volunteers have access to a wide variety of organizations whose focus - ranging from animals, kids, hunger, faith based, and more - will fall within an volunteer's interest. As Maria Shriver, Honorary Chair of CaliforniaVolunteers, states on the organization's web site, "Serving others is as easy as dishing out food in a kitchen line, donating blood, planting a school garden, reading to a child, or educating families about important programs that can empower their lives and help break cycles of poverty."

In addition, CaliforniaVolunteers is connecting with businesses, state agencies, community leaders, and nonprofit organizations by providing resources to make it easier for each organization to inform their employees and the public about the growing poverty problem in the state and how volunteers are an essential part of the solution. Communications packages with template materials, fact sheets on poverty and hunger, and the importance of volunteering are all available for free and can be downloaded from the CaliforniaVolunteers Web site.

Sources:
CaliforniaVolunteers,"CaliforniaVolunteers launches Statewide Grassroots Campaign to Increase Volunteering," PR NewsWire
Fact Sheet, Volunteering in California and the Challenges of Hunger, Homelessness and Poverty,CaliforniaVolunteers.org
About Us, CaliforniaVolunteers.org