Help! Love, MOM

Hi there Help! Love, MOM tribe. I’m in the process of rebranding. The updated blog, Growing Somewhere: Faith, Family and Finances will be one that makes a positive difference in your faith, family and finances! Do consider subscribing.

Labor Day is a holiday which acknowledges and celebrates the struggles and gains of laborers, workers and the labor movement including the payment of a fair, living wage.

However, unpaid labor is an often overlooked aspect of work that ought to be considered and celebrated as well.

Among informal volunteers, people with children under age 18 helped at a higher rate (58%) than those without children in their household (49%).

US Census

Unpaid labor can present in the form of a completely trained and fully competent, experienced member of a field or profession — be it a master plumber or the head of a regional hospital’s neurosurgery department — mentoring or sponsoring the professional development, training and elevation of a less trained person in a company, discipline or industry.

For example, teachers, doctors, social workers, architects, building trade workers and many others have mandatory professional development programs which, frankly, entail aspects of unpaid mentoring that are integral to the forming of a strong, formal and informal/cultural knowledge base in the mentee.

Unpaid labor also shows up as formal and informal volunteering.

What is Formal Volunteering?

Volunteers of both sorts seek to marshal good on behalf of others. The identity of those “others” defines the labor as formal or informal.

Formal volunteers work on behalf of and within a community or organization. Therefore, my cooperating teacher, the teacher with whom I interned when I was completing my pedagogic studies, was a kind of formal volunteer (but not exactly) because she took on an additional set of duties for which she received no additional financial compensation.

Examples of Formal Volunteering

Examples of formal volunteering include but are certainly not limited to:

• Working on the parking team;
  • Helping people park in the heat, cold and rain for your local church, synagogue, mosque, summer theater is an extremely necessary, under-appreciated area of service;
• Driving the truck or van to pick up items for a relief organization eg a soup kitchen or pantry because you have a CDL ;
• Encouraging the community to vote for your chosen political party;
  • Both the recent Republican and Democratic Party Conventions as well as state and local elections run seamlessly because of the army of volunteers who help spread the message of their candidate’s platform;
• Organizing your community’s annual Halloween Costume Party;
• Mobilizing the voting power of the local senior high school class through a sorority or fraternity led voter registration drive; and,
• Using the power of your platform to highlight local or national newsworthy events;

are just a very few of the many needed tasks in various organizations performed by formal volunteers.

Informal Volunteers

Informal helpers may manage or look after the physical, mental, medical, financial, legal, and emotional needs of a neighbor, a friend, a grandparent, a child, a parent, a spouse or a non-related minor, sick, elderly, or disabled person.

In other words, informal helpers are those who perform what may be considered “favors” for neighbors, friends and loved ones. Sometimes this terminology may inadvertently dismiss the value of the service offered. My neighbors informally helped me and I am so, so grateful.

In a mix of formal and informal ways, as a nation, we found new ways to help during the Pandemic:
we supported COVID-19 testing,
immunization and other public health efforts; conducted wellness checks on isolated seniors; supported food banks; and provided virtual tutoring and mentoring to help students stay on track in school.

US Census

My Amazing Neighbors – Informal Volunteers and Unpaid Laborers

My mom died at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Because of the shutdown I was not able to travel for about 5 months following her death.

In the meantime her house, in another state, needed attention.

Between her friends and neighbors I had less to worry about.

These wonderful informal helpers, during a whole Pandemic, mowed Mommy’s lawn, collected her mail and sent it to me, and, generally, ensured that her home looked occupied and appealingly maintained until I could go forward with the estate. I am eternally grateful.

On this Labor Day I am thankful for the work, the labor, the love that formal and informal volunteers have selflessly lavished on me and, no doubt, on you, too.

I see you! You’re over there, well, tomorrow you will be, laboring to make a community,

a profession,

a generation,

a family,

BETTER, STRONGER.

Thank you,

xoxoKimberly.

Even after a long day of volunteering, Baby Girl had one last dance in her.