Collective Wisdom

Tips for Starting a Project | What Others Have Done | What Is Look Back to Look Ahead?

Produce a Local History of Volunteering Slideshow (a community-wide project)

One comparatively simple and inexpensive way to demonstrate the impact that volunteers have had over time in your community is a slide show. While it may seem more modern to do a videotape, a slide show is much easier and has the advantage of flexibility-you can vary the length and the script to match the audience each time.

You can construct your slide show in a number of ways, such as:

• A "Day in the Life" of your community, in which you send out lots of people with cameras to shoot any and all of the sites suggested below, later organizing the slides according to time of day and showing volunteering "morning to night."
  
  
• Pick a route people often follow (from the Courthouse to the train station, or from the high school to the city park), or pick a route like "from the photographer's home to all her/his destinations that day." Then sequence the slides by location.
  
  
• By historical period, showing shots of all the organizations dating back to the Civil War, then all those that started during Reconstruction, etc. If you are from outside North America, you can organize slides by Dynasty or Royal House!
  
  
• By type of organization, clustering photos of youth-serving organizations over time, then those serving older people, then those with a health care focus, etc.

In all these cases, you can being by soliciting archival material from various organizations. Old newspaper clippings, paintings of former board members, and other such historic documentation can be photographed and used as slides.

Here are some pointers:

1. Know your objectives. Some might be:

• To surprise people ("I didn't know volunteers were responsible for that!")
• To challenge assumptions ("I just never thought volunteers would have done that.")
• To teach history
• To show the diversity of who engaged in volunteering ("You mean teenagers built that?" or "Gee, I guess African-Americans were active in their communities in ways I didn't realize.")
• To bring volunteering down to a local, in-my-backyard level
• To instill pride in people who volunteer-recognition!

2. Make a list of a variety of organizations you know were founded by volunteers and/or are still run by volunteers (or do some historical research to find out yourself). Consider the following categories:

• Faith communities
• Child welfare agencies and other social services/counseling agencies
• Senior services
• Services for the disabled
• Museums and other cultural arts institutions

To picture these, you only need external shots of the physical landmark, ideally with the name of the structure/organization on sign. Your narration will explain why you're showing the building.

3. Consider What Others Have Done that involve lots of volunteers:

• Parades
• Anti-litter/adapt-a-highway patrols
• Political demonstrations
• Fundraisers such as bake sales, flea markets, etc.
• Fundraisers such as elegant dinner dances, etc.
• Walk-a-thons, etc.
• Clearing vacant lots, doing household chores for the elderly.

To picture these, you'll have to be at the right place at the right time, or you can ask organizations if they have any file photos you can use--or take a picture of the "site" of the clean-up (or of a bunch of band instruments as a symbol) and explain it in your narrative.

4. Write an informative and fun script-and invite your audience(s)! Train a variety of people to be presenters of the show and schedule it as often as possible.

5. Give a set of slides and the script to the public library for general use. Give another set to the high school (history or social studies department?) or even a set to each school in your community, regardless of age of student.

6. If you have an available Web site, consider posting the slide show to the site so that others can use it, too.

Tips for Starting a Project | What Others Have Done | What Is Look Back to Look Ahead?

Share Your Wisdom