First Day

Tonight’s the night! It has been a month and a half since the training session I wrote of last. I wish there was an available evening sooner, but there wasn’t. At this facility, volunteers get credit for ten and a half hours per night; thus, many people come here for mandated community service, to knock-out 200 hours quickly. These folks will reserve many nights each week, until their quota is left. This creates two problems. For one, the massive blocks of time already taken, by the community service people, often discourage new volunteers by setting the start of their service back by months at a time. Secondly, while it is great for the shelter to have so many willing volunteers, there is a high turnover ratio among the community service volunteers-since they’re only serving at the court’s request- which leads to many hours of repetitive training for the supervisors.