Thank You Volunteers By Rolanda Pyle
There are so many qualities to being a volunteer The main one is having a generous heart to want to share Your talents, skills, gifts, and your time To give of oneself to help others is what makes volunteers shine! Volunteers work in corporate, non-profit, community, or even international places With employees, in medicine, education, emergency rescue, health, or with individual cases Volunteers build houses, help the sick in hospital, repair disaster areas, mentor little sisters and brothers They deliver meals to seniors, work as foster grandparents to help children in schools, and are community health advocates to others. The list is too broad to name them all But volunteers answer a much-needed call To help when and where there are needs, And give unselfishly in word and in their deeds. Volunteers are professionals, retired seniors, students, the young and the old Who often come with experience along with their hearts of gold It really doesn’t matter who or where, nor does it matter how The important thing is that volunteers are doing what’s needed now. So, we celebrate all of you who volunteer And we take the time to say thank you to all of you who care! Thank you, Volunteers, we thank you once; we thank you twice And know you are appreciated for the rest of your life!
ROLANDA T. PYLE is a licensed social worker and consultant. She is currently the part-time Community Outreach Specialist at Sunnyside Community Services - CARE NYC, where she was previously Assistant Director. CARE NYC provides support to caregivers of older adults living with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias. The author has also been featured on various radio and television programs. Her many awards include the distinguished 2004 Sloan Public Service Award and HBO’s 2004 Beah Richards Spirit Award. In April 2004, New York’s Daily News named her one of the “100 Women Who Shape Our City.” Besides her social work and her writing, Rolanda volunteers with the NYC Meals on Wheels Senior Chat program through which she provides companionship through weekly phone conversations with isolated seniors. Rolanda’s creative writing has won poetry and short story writing awards, and her work has been published in religious and community newspapers. She also contributed to a publication entitled Your Dreams Can Come True: Stories of Hope, Perseverance and Triumph for youth who are in foster care and published by Rev. Alfonso Wyatt of the Fund for the City of New York. Rolanda is the author of the books Grandma’s Hands - a children’s storybook, and Finally - a collection of inspirational poems; and the compiler of and contributor to Beneath His Everlasting Wings, a collection of devotionals. Rolanda currently attends Times Square Church in Manhattan and is active in ministry. Additional information about Rolanda may be found on her website at http://www.rorosrainbowcommunications. com/about.html
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