Wow. That totally blew our little bit of service out of the water.zzyzzogeton wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 4:51 am I was a volunteer Fireman for 32 years, a volunteer EMT for 31 years, a volunteer sheriff's department Search/Recovery Diver (drowning victims, evidence recovery) for 31 years. I also volunteered for lake clean-up campaign dives for 15 years. I was also a volunteer EMT on the corporate response team for 10+ years while employed at Dell Computers, proving EMS response for 9 buildings.
To be cheerful and festive.
. But finding volunteers over here is becoming more difficult, and one of the main reasons is, all the legal and logistical things and courses and forms you have to fill in and sign. It is as though governments and local authorities are going out of their way to make it so difficult to become a volunteer, that they don't want them. I find it sad, frustrating and a blight on authority when an over paid official who's remuneration is set in stone in a contract is making life so difficult for people who only want to help, for no money, and more importantly, the people and organisations that need the help. Sorry if i sound like a whinger, but i take my hat off to all volunteers, they are the real hero's. 
Very interesting O.C.!OLDE CUTLER wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 7:36 pm I started out on a new volunteer role recently. I don't know how many of you may be familiar with a website www.findagrave.com , but on that website one can find where the burial sites are for family members, celebrities, and anyone you may be looking for. I signed up to be what is called a photo volunteer, which means for instance that if you are doing a family tree or other genealogical work, you can start a page there and have your ancestors listed in a memorial to them. The originators of the memorials will then make a photo request for some one local to the cemetery to go out and take a photo of the grave stone to include in their memorial. The people making the photo request may be anywhere in the US or world for that matter. If the cemetery is within the radius of miles that I have included in my profile by my zip code, then I will get a notification of the request and can act on it at my leisure to go to the cemetery, take the photo requested, and post it to be included on the memorial page. Kind of interesting. My brother and I have done a lot of family research in this area and I am familiar with most of the cemeteries in our area, so this was something I wanted to try. I was out today to a local cemetery and did 3 photo requests. The snow cover here over the winter was an issue, but over the last week the snow has been melting rapidly making picture taking of things on the ground possible. The people who request the photos are most appreciative and grateful for your efforts as they may be hundreds or thousands of miles away and would likely never get the chance to take the photo themselves. So I truck out to a cemetery with the DSLR, notebook, GPS unit and cemetery maps to do this occasionally. When I post the photo, the GPS coordinates go with it so anyone can locate the grave on one of the many mapping websites. Lets see, I got 3 done today and there are 107 more requests within 25 miles of my house. Hmmmm
Much if not all of that is because of lawyers. The organizations for which you’re volunteering have to cover their a**es to protect from lawsuitscudgee wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:03 pm Volunteering is one of the great things we can do as a civilised society, my mum used to say, if you can do something good for someone, do it, and you do it because it is the wright thing to do, i have done a few volunteering roles as many of you have.
