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 or to supplement the nutrition and supply at a local food pantry, gardening connect 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 to 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, that this last bit of stressful activity can be cut down 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!!
