Plenty of Volunteering

Before I graduated I thought that it would be a good thing to volunteer once I have the time. So when during the summer one of my co-workers invited me to a meeting about a non-profit organization, I happily went and have been volunteering for them ever since. The organization's name is the Baby Pantry. They work in collaboration with another organization, Healthy Start/Healthy Families (HS/HF), that is based in a local hospital:

Healthy Start/Healthy Families Oakland is an award winning fully-credentialed collaborative program that provides home visitation services for vulnerable families with infants and young children throughout Oakland County.

The Baby Pantry's role is to provide diapers to the families that are enrolled in the HS/HF program, because they can't be bought with food stamps, or through the WIC Program. I am happy to be involved in this, because it is a brand new endeavor, and we are getting a lot of donations, and we are making a difference.

I was also interested in participating in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and I have an interview on Monday!

But if you know anything about me, you know that my passion are pregancies, birth and babies. Well, I contacted a local midwife and offered my help to her. She explained that because of privacy issues she couldn't make me do any kind of clerical work in her practice, and she directed me to a local hospital. I called, and the very kind nurse in charge of volunteers thought that I could be a great candidate to volunteer in the Mother/Baby unit, administering hearing screening to newborns. I had my interview last Thursday, went to the doctors on Monday to get the tests on TB and Rubella which I got back yesterday, and now I am waiting for the nurse to call me back to schedule my training.

I am really excited about this because it will be a very hands on experience, and the babies are between 1 and 2 days old...how adorable is that. I'm hoping that the nurses are nice (the one I saw seemed nice when I went in for my interview) and maybe tell me more about what they think about their jobs and such...Hopefully the nurse will call back shortly!!