"Giving Back" by Steven Ketchpel

There’s a movement afoot to transform the memory of 9/11 into one of civic action.

The site has partnered with All for Good, HandsOnNetwork, VolunteerMatch, and GuideStar to provide search engines for giving and volunteering opportunities.  As I was doing my researching recommended sites for the book, this was exactly the set I came up with.  So, kudos to them for partnering with the best out there, and if you find yourself looking for opportunities for days *other* than 9/11, try going to these partner sites directly (more detail below).

If you happen to be in an area where these sites have critical mass, you may find hundreds of listings each month. When filtering by type of event and date, though, even the more robust lists dwindle to a handful of options. In areas of the country that are less “wired” or less densely populated, the online databases may not yield anything of interest.

Web Sites Listing Volunteer Opportunities

• All for Good (www.allforgood.org) includes the listings from several other sites, so appears to be the most comprehensive. It offers the ability to restrict the search by geography, cause area, and date range, so is a good place to start.
• VolunteerMatch (www.volunteermatch.org) is another nation-wide site. The advanced search tab allows restricting the results to those opportunities that are good for kids, teens or groups. Although you can’t easily filter the results to the date(s) you’re interested in, you can sort by date.
• HandsOn Network (www.handsonnetwork.org) with 70 affiliates and 245 “action centers,” this site lists many opportunities, and has quite a bit of helpful information.

A Memorial to Jeremy Glick

I can’t write about September 11th and giving without remembering one of my co-workers who gave his life on that day. Jeremy Glick was an account manager for Vividence who was on UA flight 93 on his way to a sales meeting in San Francisco.  He was in phone contact with his wife during the hijacking, and was part of the group of passengers who prevented the plane from reaching its intended target.

My “I will”:  “I will honor Jeremy Glick’s memory with a gift to a charity, and sharing that memory with others.”