One of the most joyous ways to contribute to your community to participate in a community garden, Whether the goal is to teach school kids about plants and healthy food or to supplement the nutrition and supply at a local food pantry, gardening connects people with nature and each other. Some of us participate as share holders in community gardens, managing our own plots and sharing in the regular maintenance of the garden overall. With stress over finances and the environment upsetting so many of us, the ability to help the community through gardening is an effort that provides tangible benefits and soothes our souls.
Expanding movements around community gardens to raise food for those in need or as important teaching resources in school have connected many people with the land, with each other and with some ancient technologies they may not be recently familiar with – shovels, buckets and watering cans. But even traditional enterprises can be improved with a little technology, and when organizing a large group around a big action, VolunteerSpot can make the coordination and scheduling so much easier. VolunteerSpot cuts down this last bit of stressful activity to such a small amount of time, the mud has hardly dried on your boots before the entire schedule is set up and done.
All these projects start with an organizer or a group, and then grow until land is secured and volunteers put to work. Many volunteers are needed to manage the ongoing tasks of the garden: weeding, turning compost, planting or harvesting crops or watering crews to work the hose (lest we lose the food!).
A garden by nature spans a season – depending on your climate it could be a 3 month project or a 12 month one. The great thing about VolunteerSpot is that our tool can make setting up a schedule for a community garden volunteers a much less time consuming task than it is now, and make it super easy for volunteers to help whether it’s a one-time project – turning the soil early in the season, or a regular weekly role like weeding with kids. The volunteer coordinator can set up the schedule so that all the volunteers can see who’s working when (making it easier for friends to find each other) or just show the jobs and how many people are needed in each slot.
Communication is easier with regular emails through VolunteerSpot – especially helpful if a big job suddenly comes up (Bumper Crop – Come Harvest With Us!!) – coordinators can simply send it to everyone who’s on the volunteer list and show the number of new slots, email it out, and get easy click back responses on who’s ready to help.
Growing things is a passion of mine and it thrills me to see this movement growing. I’m happy that VolunteerSpot makes the scheduling so much easier because I get more time to day dream with my seed catalogs!!
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Diana Schlott is the Chief Evangelist of VolunteerSpot (http://www.volunteerspot.com/), a free time-saving online signup tool that makes it easy for parents, teachers and leaders to coordinate volunteers for anything – school and community gardens, classroom readers, school carnival fundraisers, recess and cafeteria monitors, soccer snacks, VBS, Scout campouts, swim meets and more… Please take a live or video tour of VolunteerSpot today. She lives and tends her huge garden south of San Jose, CA with her husband and son.
