Everyday Needs Versus Holiday Wants - an appeal from Sara Collins: Chair, Board of Directors

Dear friends of Hands On Charlotte,

The holidays are often about "wants."

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, proclaims the opening line of a popular old holiday song.

Kids want a bike, or the newest Uggs, or the bloodiest video combat game with the coolest explosions.

Grown-ups want a new car, or just a couple of minutes to relax, or to happily discover at midnight on Christmas Eve toy assembly instructions that aren't written in Mandarin Chinese or Swahili or some ancient Russian characters.

(For the record, I want a decent pair of black leather gloves and for there to be no fog on 77 North heading over Fancy Gap as I travel to West Virginia.)

But for many, the holidays are about "needs" - basic ones, such as food and shelter; and more complicated ones, such as education or money to pay medical bills.

"Find a need and fill it," advised Ruth Stafford Peale, wife of theologian and author Norman Vincent Peale and an author, editor and speaker in her own right. Good advice at any time, but especially during the holidays, and especially during this time when needs are staring us in the face every which way we turn.

Hands On Charlotte has needs. You may not realize that, but we do.

We need you to keep our projects full so we can help our partner agencies keep their focus on meeting our community's critical needs.

We need you to let us know when you're coming to a project, and when you're not, so our project leaders can manage the projects and continue to deliver the best volunteer experience possible to both you and our partner agencies. People are depending on you!

We need you to let us know if there are other ways you'd like to serve the organization or our community, whether that's serving on one of HOC's many committees or suggesting a new project or partner agency.

And Hands On Charlotte needs your financial support.

Volunteering may seem like it's free, but it's not.

Like you - and perhaps your own business - we have bills to pay. The website you use to register for projects and learn more about HOC didn't spontaneously program itself into existence in the cyber-world. The lights and water don't "volunteer" to turn themselves off and on in the office.

The mulch you spread on Hands On Charlotte Day or at a BIG Project didn't chop itself into tiny bits or deliver itself to project sites. Unlike a Disney movie, the shovels and wheelbarrows and paint cans and brushes don't magically come to life and dance across the city to other project sites.

We have the single most dedicated staff of any nonprofit organization in this city, but they don't "volunteer" to work for us. Like you, they have mortgages and kids and car payments, too.

Houses of faith often solicit their congregations for their "time, talents and treasures." We at Hands On Charlotte are deeply grateful for the time and talents you share with us every day of the year, and we don't take lightly the contributions you make in these ways to meeting the needs of our community.

But we need your treasure as well to ensure that Hands On Charlotte can continue to provide ways for you, in turn, to help meet the needs of the community.

As the onslaught of holiday charitable appeals begins to hit your mailboxes and in-boxes and phones, I hope you'll consider making a gift to Hands On Charlotte to meet our needs this season.



With gratitude for your service and support,

Sara Collins

Chair, Board of Directors

Pop quiz (and it's easy yes/no questions!)

Can you read?


Can you do basic (no more than algebra) math?


Can you describe a platypus?


If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're perfectly qualified to tutor in one of Hand On Charlotte's adult literacy/GED tutoring labs.


Each week, HOC provides volunteers for labs at two Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) campuses, Central and Harris (by the airport). Six projects are offered at various times during the day and evening Tuesdays through Thursdays.

I've been a tutor since I joined HOC in 2000 and have co-led the Thursday night project at CPCC's Harris Campus since 2003 (I think!). It's been the most rewarding of all my HOC experiences by far. I've been a bookworm since I was a kid; I can't imagine not being able to read, to be transported through the power of words to another time, place, perspective, experience. To be able to help other people become confident in their ability to transform the characters on a page to images in their minds is the greatest privilege!

Right now, we need a lot more volunteers who are interested in literacy to join us at the Harris Campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. to experience this great privilege. A typical night finds the lab full of 10 to 15 students, eager for some personal attention and instruction. That same night finds the lab near-vacant of volunteers to help them. Sometimes, we have as few as three tutors; other times, we have seven or eight. Either way, tutors have to juggle at least two and sometimes three or four students, and no one gets a quality experience in this situation.

I think volunteers shy away from tutoring older students and adults out of fear. Perhaps they don't realize that most of our students range from reading at the third-grade level to finishing their GED and are afraid they won't know or remember what to teach or how to help them. (Here are a couple of hints: the textbooks used in both the literacy and GED programs are super-easy to understand and it's OK to send a student to the restroom for five minutes while you brush up on your long division skills!)


Perhaps they're nervous about the kinds of students they'll encounter. I've met the most amazing folks: a woman in her mid-50s who came "to school" after the women in her church laughed at her when they realized she couldn't read; some of the Lost Boys who braved the killing fields of Rwanda to come to the U.S.; a sharecropper's son from South Carolina in his late 70s who came to the lab faithfully every day after work and spent three-and-a-half hours learning the alphabet.


And (here's where that platypus comes in) sisters from Somalia who worked as hotel maids by day and studied English by night. It's hard enough to explain a platypus to someone whose native tongue is English; try explaining it to someone who's just learning our language! But I promise you, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do as a tutor!


If you can describe a platypus, tell a noun from a verb and/or add a (short!) column of numbers, please consider trying one of the adult tutoring projects! I can't speak for the others, but on Thursday nights at the Harris Campus, we've got a dedicated corps of regular tutors who welcome you to join us! More importantly, we've got an enthusiastic corps of regular students who will be more grateful for your presence and brains than I can express to you on this blog.


Tutoring is not just about volunteers teaching the students; there's plenty of learning happening both ways. But you'll have to come find that out on your own. See you Thursday!


Sara Collins is the co-leader at the CPCC GED tutoring program.