Even through difficult times, organizations enhance the quality of our children’s lives.

“The DC Youth Orchestra Program provides music classes and ensemble training to all students who wish to participate.  Because of the program’s unique structure and curriculum, no child is turned away and every child is challenged by being placed in a level appropriate to his or her ability.  We accept all students, regardless of experience or income level.

A staff member with Doctors Without Borders offers an insider’s view of the organization’s medical relief work in Haiti and how your thoughts and prayers are helping those in need.

In the days and weeks after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, beyond donating money, many of us felt helpless. What was most needed, of course, were doctors to help the wounded. Tonic spoke with Toronto-based staff member Isabelle Jeanson at the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical relief group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins sans frontières (MSF) about daily life on the ground. Here’s her first-person account, as told to Tonic writer Darragh Worland.

Our plane touched down in Port-au Prince on Jan. 14 at 4:50 p.m. – exactly 48 hours after the earthquake. It had taken us 24 hours to travel the short distance from Toronto to Haiti, and we had no idea of what lay ahead. We couldn’t really absorb the full extent of the damage on the drive from the airport to the city, because the quake had wiped out all power and it was already dark.

One of our offices in a house that we rent in a neighborhood called Pétionville was surprisingly unaffected, so that became our base. The staff there had felt the building shake, but there was no damage to the structure. Our hospitals were all damaged, but the offices themselves weren’t as affected.

It wasn’t until the next morning that we saw how bad it was. You see the images on TV and in photos, but you cannot understand the destruction until you are there. It was like a war zone; like a bomb had gone off. Concrete buildings just completely collapsed or were twisted in half. There would be one building reduced to rubble standing next to another that was barely damaged at all. The damage was absolutely nonsensical.

In one neighborhood called Carrefour, medical personnel had set up makeshift tarps on the street outside of a hospital that had been destroyed. A lot of them were students who weren’t even qualified to be doctors. Everywhere there were people with horrendous wounds. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life, because you wouldn’t see that kind of thing on TV. They were lacking supplies, they didn’t even have alcohol, but they were suturing wounds and doing the best they could to help.

I had arrived with three logistics people with us and two nurses, both Americans who had been with Doctors Without Borders for 20 years. We already had about 200 ex-pat staff on the ground, about 80 to 100 of which were doctors, with the other half being logistics and administrative staff. They were all affected by the earthquake. We lost about eight to ten national staff ourselves, people we knew and worked with on a regular basis.

This was a unique kind of emergency for us. We’ve never been so personally affected, where we ourselves were victims. It was a double whammy and that made it hard for us to continue with our work. We had a memorial service in Port-au-Prince while I was there. It was especially hard for me because I have been working with Haiti for three years and I’d already visited twice. I never imagined anything like this could happen.

We set up tents outside the office where we slept in sleeping bags on mattresses that we had in storage laid out on the floor. There were 15-20 of us all sharing the one bathroom in the office. On the worst nights, we’d get maybe four hours of sleep; on the best it was closer to six. But you just have to get up. It doesn’t matter how tired you are. Knowing there are people out there who need you, you just go, go, go, mostly running on adrenaline.

Doctors Without Borders has what we call “hospital kits” – huge, huge containers full of tents and equipment that can be assembled on the ground into temporary hospitals, which are really a series of interconnected tents. Each tent is about the size of a small house. The walls are blown up with air, so they smell just like a new inflatable raft. Then all the wiring and plumbing is installed. Even though I have worked with MSF for almost eight years now, it’s still mind-boggling to me that we can put this stuff together. At best, it takes a full 48 hours to get it all up and ready.

The biggest problem is finding appropriate terrain to set up and this was especially hard in Haiti. We need a flat surface, about the size of a football field. Luckily, that’s exactly what we found: a football field behind a school that hadn’t been claimed by any of the other groups or militaries. We don’t have nearly the resources of the military, but we’re really good at adapting to any situation. We bring in our own generators for power; we ship in water; and we have the technology to purify water.

My job as an emergency press officer is to act as a buffer between the media and the teams but, in Haiti, I also acted as an ear for dozens of the wounded. It was very frustrating for me. I wish I could have done something more. I wish I was a doctor. I found the best thing I could do was to walk around the wards and let people talk, which they seemed to appreciate. Just to let people know that you care is extremely important. It’s the solidarity and the compassion that is comforting on some level. I met so many people that I’m still thinking about today.

There was one girl in particular, a 19-year-old named Sinthia Chéri. She had a terrible wound on her thigh. She had been trapped under a piece of concrete for a long time, so the tissue had begun to necrotize. In a case like that, the doctors first have to remove all the dead tissue, which leaves a gaping wound too big to close. The wound is then bandaged and monitored, cleaned out regularly. We saw a lot of this kind of injury in Haiti.

Sinthia was special. She was so outgoing. Even though she was in a lot of pain, she wanted to hang out on her bed, talk about clothes and just be a regular teenager. Her optimism was amazing to me. I never guessed that she had such a tragic story, until a doctor who had seen us talking told me that Sinthia had lost her baby in the quake. She had given birth on Jan. 4. After the quake, they had nowhere to go. The two of them were sleeping in the streets, where it gets really cold at night.

I think the baby died of cold, about a week later, but I didn’t question her too much. When I asked her about it and why she hadn’t told me, she didn’t want to talk about it at first. She didn’t want to dwell on it. She was really sad. I’ve been worried about her, because the day before I left, she started to develop a fever. I’ve sent emails to find out how she’s doing, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

Now that I’m home, all I want to do is go back. Some of our staff will be there for months. The most immediate needs are shelter reconstruction and an economic boost. After the people regain their health, they need a place to live and work. When I was there, a lot of young men approached us and asked us for work. We were hiring staff, but there were huge lines of people applying for one job. The people are desperate to make some kind of income. Most people don’t have the money to rebuild their house, so they are at a loss of how to find a new home. For now, they live in temporary shelters, with bed sheets attached to sticks and trees. Others sleep on sidewalks or in the streets. Cars have to be careful at night not to run people over.

Doctors Without Borders has the supplies to provide care, but the health care system in Haiti is not working. Some people will need long-term care in rehabilitative hospitals and plastic surgery, especially burn victims. But for all those who cannot donate, words of solidarity are incredibly comforting. Finding bloggers and sending comments of support or participating in online forums, chat rooms and Twitter to send messages of solidarity can also contribute in their own way.

I have never had the chance to say this to anyone, but the response from the public was outstanding. When you’re working on the ground, that kind of solidarity is absolutely inspiring. The responses on our blog brought tears to my eyes. People wrote heartfelt, sincere words of encouragement, like “hang in there” and “you can do it.” That kind of stuff is so helpful on the ground. That is huge, absolutely massive to get that kind of feedback from people.

To donate, go to Doctors Without Borders.

A micro-credit program and banking system for more than 200,000 women in Haiti has come to the rescue of the overall economy in the wake of the devastating earthquake.

At a time when Haitian commercial banks remain closed, Fonkoze, the Haitian branch of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, mobilized over one weekend to get funds to its members in rural towns as well as Port-au-Prince.

Between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m., last Saturday, January 23, Fonkoze brought in two million dollars in cash from their U.S. bank and distributed it by helicopters to regional offices in the most remote parts of the country.

That got money flowing again. The cash came from Haitians working abroad who had sent funds — called remittances — to their relatives.

Also known as Haiti’s, “Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor,” Fonkoze found a way to get money to its members through the 34 of its 41 branch offices still open after the earthquake. It had a lot of help in high places: the U.S. Secretary of State, top Treasury and Defense Department officials, the Federal Reserve, the Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the Inter-American Development Bank and more.

The operation read like a cloak-and-dagger saga. Anne Hastings, the CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services, was point person on shaping the unorthodox solution. It involved many conference calls to Washington, New York and Miami, as well as intricate strategies with managers on the ground in Haiti who would get the money to the women.

By Friday, January 22, the plan was ready. Remittances from U.S.-based Haitians deposited in Fonkoze’s accounts at City National Bank of New Jersey were sent to JP Morgan Chase in Miami, converted into cash — and packed in office supply boxes. An armored vehicle then transferred the boxes to Homestead Air Force Base.

A C-17 plane, diverted from Langley Air Force Base, landed at Homestead at 3 a.m. Saturday, took on the camouflaged cargo of cash, and flew to Haiti, where the major airport at Port-au-Prince has been under U.S. military control since the earthquake.

Once there, Hastings and two other Fonkoze executives inspected the cash cargo — and called the Pentagon to say so far, so good. Under a military escort, the Fonkoze vehicle loaded with the boxes of cash awaited the two helicopters that could fly the money to 10 designated drop-off locations.

Fonkoze’s Jean-Guy Noel rode with the helicopters as they began deliveries before dawn. Seven hours later, all the cash had been delivered and the helicopters were back in Port-au-Prince. By early afternoon, the cash had been distributed to the 34 Fonkoze branches. Almost immediately, the Fonkoze managers began giving Fonkoze members cash from their relatives, a financial lifeline at a time when the formal banking system is in shambles and remittances sent through it from overseas Haitians remain locked up.

Jennifer Harris, a member of the policy staff of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a memo to Pentagon officials released by Fonkoze, spelled out the implications of the combined State-Defense operation.

“Fonkoze has by far the deepest reach into the country’s rural poor, a remittance network that would take years to recreate from scratch. As people continue to migrate from Port-au-Prince, Fonkoze’s branch network will become even more essential,” she said. “Perhaps most important, unlike the commercial banks, Fonkoze has re-opened many of its branches and has continued to pay out remittances using its cash on hand.”

In essence, she said, the unconventional operation “may well have stabilized the banking system for the country’s most vulnerable population.”

Fonkoze has been operating in Haiti for 15 years. Ninety-nine percent of its members are women. By midweek, it expects all but three of its branches to be open. In the heavily damaged capital city, Fonkoze managers set up shop at a makeshift office in the courtyard next to its damaged headquarters—as hundreds of Haitians lined up to get the money due them.

In addition to micro-lending programs, Fonkoze sponsors major literacy, health care and micro-insurance programs. Its remittances and savings accounts serve more than 200,000 people, making it a significant part of the country’s financial system. Relatives of Fonkoze members working abroad use its conduits to send back money — “that taxi driver in New York City who wants to send fifty dollars to his mother,” says Leigh Carter, Fonkoze USA fundraiser — amounting to $57.7 million last year.

It also serves as a vendor for three other remittance services that still operate after the earthquake: MoneyGram, CAM and Unitransfer. The process is a lifeline for a country where, in 2007, 79 percent of Haitians lived on less than $2 a day and 55 percent lived on half that.

Fonkoze’s micro-lending program has four different levels. The first step is for the poorest of the poor and may involve home repairs and health care, as well as building the confidence of the women as they plan to start a micro-enterprise. Next the women may qualify for small loans — perhaps only $25 — with a short repayment period, while they enroll in literacy classes. In Haiti, more than 50 percent of people are illiterate.

The third level is the core: a “solidarity” group in which friends take out loans together, then morph into credit centers of 30 to 40 women. These women can start out borrowing $75, but if they prosper they can borrow up to $1,300 for six months.

The fourth level focuses on business development. Some women in this group borrow up to $25,000 and are being nurtured to become part of the formal economy, creating jobs in rural areas where there are few employment opportunities.

It isn’t the first time that a micro-lending network of mostly women has taken a lead role in helping rebuild a country’s economy after a natural disaster. In Poland, after a devastating flood in the mid-1990s, the U.S.-backed Fundusz Mikro became the conduit for credit to small businesses, ultimately funneling more than $10 million to rebuild when the central government proved inept and also tone-deaf to the challenge.

Leigh Carter, who broke several vertebrae in her back getting out of the Fonkoze headquarters building during the earthquake and was airlifted out days later, is back at work in Washington. She says multinational economic and financial leaders already are talking to Fonkoze about ways to use their extensive network of micro-lending programs for programs to rebuild the Haitian economic base.

“People are coming to us saying ‘you need to expand your capacity,’” she said.

But first things first: the immediate priority had to be getting cash to its members, throughout Haiti, from their friends and relatives abroad, which in itself expands members ability to survive and rebuild.

Fonkoze has had strong success working with microfinance programs to improve lives of suffering women and their families. This program, Chemen Lavi Miyo, which means “Pathway to a Better Life” in Haitian creole, is testing a new approach to helping those living in extreme poverty to transition into a sustainable way of life. This highly structured and intensive program combines livelihoods and basic support with training and financial management so that at the end of just 18 months, participants will be equipped with the skills and a business plan to move themselves out of poverty. “What we want to demonstrate,” says Anne Hastings, director of the program, is that there is a “proven, replicable, methodology for accompanying people as they struggle to make their way out of these conditions into a …decent standard of living.” Fonkoze is now leading microfinance programs that will help rebuild Port-au-Prince since the devastating 10 January, 2010 earthquake that hit the capital and outlying areas.

———-

For more information on this topic:

• “A graduation pathway for Haiti’s poorest – Lessons learnt from Fonkoze,” Karishma Huda and Anton Simanowitz – The Mastercard Foundation, 29 September, 2009
• “The Haiti Earthquake: How microfinance is helping,” – CGAP – Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, World Bank Publications, 27 January, 2010
• “Reimagining Microfinance,” Alex Counts, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 13 May, 2008
• “Gender and Microlending – Diveristy of Experience,” – Critical Half / Annual Journal 2004, Women for Women International

Journalist Peggy Simpson worked 17 years for the Associated Press, in Texas and Washington, D.C.; covered economics and politics for the Hearst Newspapers, served as Washington bureau chief for Ms. magazine and reported on East Europe as a freelancer during the 1990s. She has taught at Indiana University, George Washington University and the American Studies Center at Warsaw University. She currently is a freelance writer in Washington D.C.

This Women News Network news feature on Haiti is brought to you through a WNN partnership with the WMC – Women’s Media Center. Additional media materials for this article has been provided by Women News Network – WNN

This is the time of year when all of us think about giving back. But for some, it seems to be in their blood.

When Cory Doctorow co-founded the open-source software company OpenCola in 1999, he was just another techie genius. Then he had a discussion with people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a technology advocacy nonprofit and proponent of Internet civil liberties — and he became passionate about liberalizing copyright laws so he could help EFF provide citizens with greater access to and use of digital material.

Mr. Doctorow sold his software company and began working with EFF to further the cause of free digital media sharing. “They couldn’t afford to employ me at first, but then they got a grant and I became their outreach coordinator,” he says. “I set up blogs, went to meetings with studio executives, and helped to defeat proposals that weren’t in our favor.”

Mr. Doctorow eventually became the director of European affairs for EFF and was able to boast of a career as an activist.

For those who are interested in doing the same, he stresses the importance of volunteering for a cause first. “Your best bet is to join up with a cause pro bono or part time,” he says. “You have to be realistic and see the value of each experience.”

Among the various types of nonprofits, some of the most visible are community-based organizations that provide direct services such as Meals on Wheels, job-placement assistance and child care. Others are concerned with arts and culture, advocacy and social policy, scientific research or international outreach.

How do you go about targeting a nonprofit with which to work? Mr. Doctorow recommends approaching organizations as a donor would and looking carefully at their statistics. “Find out their ideology, how they pay their executives, how they administer their funds and how they handle crises,” he says.

If your hope is to procure a full-time job, your odds will be better if you select a larger nonprofit. Staff roles at these organizations include the executive director, the director of development (fund raising), the director of programming and the director of marketing.

Most nonprofits hire staffers through their human-resources departments, although volunteers can be brought on more informally. To assess your options, check out Web sites such as Guidestar, Idealist, and the Nonprofit Career Network.

In your interviews, you should emphasize your entrepreneurial spirit. Running a nonprofit is complex, so the more business savvy you can bring to the table, the better.

Even if you do manage to snag a paid position, you should prepare for a difficult climb. The majority of activists employed by nonprofits make less than $50,000 annually. And the nature of the work is known to cause high stress and burnout.

If you aren’t able to start working with a nonprofit immediately, you can still engage in experience-building activist activities on your own. From forming a group in your local community to hosting a fund-raising event, there are a lot of things you can do now to move your cause forward and whet your appetite for a career in the nonprofit world.

Write to Alexandra Levit at reinvent@wsj.com

In the last decade, a generation of social entrepreneurs has become increasingly visible by creating self-sustaining businesses. Social entrepreneurs are similar to regular entrepreneurs with one main difference–their gains aren’t measured in financial profit, but by the impact they have on society.

Many entrepreneurs have started social enterprises, breaking nonprofit tradition by blending mission with money, referred to as “double bottom line” businesses. Jerr Boschee, executive director and founder of The Institute for Social Entrepreneurship, says for a while, nonprofits were hung up on the double bottom line because it seemed contradictory to merge doing well with doing good. But Boschee says self-sufficiency has become necessary for many nonprofit groups to operate. “We have today three times as many nonprofits as we had 30 years ago, and they’re all at the same watering hole.”

No longer limited by philanthropic donations and public subsidies, these organizations now have a way of being self-sufficient while still helping others in social need. And for some of these organizations, helping others means helping them start their own businesses.

Helping Others Get Started
Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen is a kitchen incubator in Queens, New York, dedicated to helping struggling entrepreneurs start and develop food businesses. The kitchen offers business counseling, mentoring and support for entrepreneurs who have a line of goods, but are limited in funds and business knowledge.

“We go through the whole thing,” says founder Kathrine Gregory. “How do you market? How do you write a business plan?”

The 55-year-old food industry veteran is an entrepreneur herself and offers her know-how by partnering with nonprofits that house kitchen facilities. In 1996, Gregory started her kitchen incubator concept with an organization that had an 850-square-foot kitchen in Brooklyn. The facility was being used for job training, but operation costs were quickly eating up the funding. Gregory convinced the board to let her test the kitchen incubator concept, and the resulting profits helped turn the nonprofit into a self-sustaining business.

Today, Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen operates in conjunction with the Consortium for Worker Education and Artisan Baking Center. With a 5,000-square-foot facility, the kitchen is used for culinary arts training, general education and ESL courses during the day. At night the kitchen transforms into a bustling entrepreneurial atmosphere, complete with a dough press, chocolate melter, and a variety of mixers and ovens.

According to Gregory, most entrepreneurs at Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen–who pay $180 to $220 per shift to use the space–turn a profit within the first six to 12 months. The revenue made from rentals has totaled about $200,000.

“People think this is an amazing concept,” Gregory says. “It’s really a win-win, everyplace that you look.” She believes that leveling the playing field for low-income entrepreneurs is one reason her idea has hit home with the local community.

Kiva founders Matt Flannery, 30, and his wife, Jessica, also took the business partner angle with their Kiva.orgmicrolending website. The two started Kiva after traveling to Africa and learning of the enterprising atmosphere there.

“We interviewed people every day for weeks and talked about people’s business plans,” says Matt. “I thought it was fascinating that I was talking about business, business plans and scaling an inventory challenges in a place that I only associated with deep poverty.”

The experience stayed with Matt and Jessica when the two returned to California and partnered with four others, working out of coffee shops and a tiny San Francisco apartment to develop the Kiva website and concept. Their goal remains showing people the business dynamic they experienced in Africa. “It was a different take on poverty, a different take on Africa than you typically hear when you’re out here in the United States,” Matt says.

On the Kiva website, lenders can donate to entrepreneurs trying to start a business in third-world countries. Loans start at $25, which goes a long way in the third world. The entrepreneurs pay back the loans 99 percent of the time–a remarkable default rate in the finance world. “[It's] connecting as an equal or a business partner, an entrepreneur, rather than as a charitable endeavor or benefactor or taking pity on someone else,” Matt says.

And pity is something Matt says the media has thrived on for some time. “Often we want to hear about war and bloodshed and disease and that’s only a small part of the story about what goes on in a huge continent like Africa,” he adds.

Like Gregory, Matt also struggled to convince others about the viability of his idea. “One attribute of good ideas is that they challenge people’s existing mindset,” he says. “Now that I know that, I wouldn’t have put so much weight in other people’s opinions.”

Why It’s Working
Despite some skepticism, “Social entrepreneurship is really taking off around the world,” says David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, which has been translated into 16 languages. In his book, Bornstein chronicles the work of Ashoka, an international organization that helps fund entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to social problems.

According to Bornstein, the relentless won’t-take-no-for-an-answer quality of entrepreneurs is what gives them their edge in business. “They absorb the failure, they learn, they surround themselves with a good team and then they redirect.” These same attributes, when applied in the social realm, can result in community-changing solutions.

In the end, Gregory says it’s the energy of the entrepreneurs she comes into contact with that sustain her in her business. For Matt and Jessica, being part of something larger than themselves has inspired them.

“It’s not about me, it’s not about my organization,” Matt says. “It’s about people connecting to people and using technology as a conduit.”

By Jessica Chen | October 19, 2007

So far in 2009, Kara Richardson Whitely of Summit, New Jersey, has run in Central Park at midnight for UNICEF, jumped in icy Lake Champlain, Vt. for Special Olympics, walked amid monkeys and alligators for the MS Society, walked/jogged where Washington slept for National Parks and walked the Flying Pig Marathon course to benefit the American Heart Association. She is taking on a physical event for charity each month of the year — an initiative she calls the Save the World Diet.

This Save the World Diet movement — of taking action steps toward better health and a better world — was inspired by her 2007 trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. The journey to Africa’s highest peak was not only a celebration of her 120-pound weight loss, it was a fund raiser for Global Alliance for Africa’s AIDS orphans programs. She couldn’t justify not getting out of bed to train when a child needed fresh water, an education, a chance.

After the birth of her daughter a year later, she was left with about 50 pounds of baby weight to lose all over again. She remembered how motivating it was to be working for a cause as well as a fitness goal. She signed up for an event each month of 2009, knowing that it would allow her to go from feeling helpless about her weight and the problems in the world to feeling empowered and strong.

So far this year, she’s down several pounds, feeling great and has raised thousands of dollars for charities.

By the year’s end her treks up mountains and down the scale will help AIDS orphans, those with Leukemia & Lymphoma and at-risk youth. She will also dance for food at a Cancan for Hunger, and bicycle 220 miles from Hershey, Pa. (away from all of that chocolate) to New York City for Breast Cancer patients. The next challenge is June 6, a Shenandoah Mountain hike for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training program. The year will end with another Kilimanjaro climb for AIDS orphans. (There are a few spots left on the trek, if folks would like to join her!)

Kara is the founder of www.fatwomanonthemountain.com, a website to inform and inspire others on their weight loss journey, and a contributor on www.raisedpath.com. She is a finalist in the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Casting Call competition. She was a speaker at the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Luncheon, where she also introduced Olympian Joetta Clark Diggs.

Kara has been a newspaper journalist (interned at the Star Ledger, now at the Courier News) for a decade. Her story of conquering Camel’s Hump a decade after it had left her winded and beaten was featured in Self magazine. Kara grew up in South Burlington, Vt. and is a member of the Green Mountain Club and the American Hiking Society.

She lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter. They recently moved from Short Hills to Summit. (Really).

— ANDY LAGOMARSINO, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Susan Mitchell has been unemployed since March, but she’s never at a loss for work.

A Type A personality who found herself with time on her hands, Mitchell is almost as busy now as before she was laid off from her job as a project manager for software development. She’s a hospice volunteer, a foster mother for rescued dogs and, twice a week, the lady in the pink pinafore who visits WakeMed with the canine equivalent of a happy pill.

“It has changed my life tremendously,” Mitchell said of being able to expand her volunteer activities while looking for a new job.

Those who work with charities across the Triangle say they have seen a measurable increase in the number of volunteers who want to give time and in the number of hours volunteers have to offer since last fall, when the U.S. economy began to sour. Some say they have noticed an increase since January, which may be credited in part to President Barack Obama’s admonishment to Americans to contribute to community service.

“You’d be surprised at the calls I get. People saying, ‘I’m out of work, and I really want to help the community, but I really want to get some experience, too,’ ” said Corinne Everett, director of volunteer services at the Volunteer Center of Durham.

The center works with 600 other nonprofits, connecting people with organizations that can use them. In some cases, Everett said, organizations get far more applications for volunteers than there are open positions.

A good match can benefit both the organization and the volunteer, Everett said. Charities, which have seen their monetary donations drop with the economy, can use the hands-on help more than ever. Those who give their time get a chance to learn a new skill or stay fresh with one in the field in which they used to work.

Volunteering can also serve as a networking opportunity, and it restores some structure to the life of a person accustomed to being on the job.

“Working is just a fundamental need,” said Tamara Richert, who has just started as a volunteer in another WakeMed program.

Richert’s job in software development was recently moved to Germany. She decided to stay in Raleigh, and she’s considering changing careers, to something in the medical field. As a volunteer, she will be entering and interpreting data from interviews with patients to help the hospital improve its services — an easy fit with her computer expertise. She’ll also have the chance to observe jobs throughout the hospital to see what might interest her.

“This will give me a good feel for what it would be like to work in this environment,” she said.

Skills for a paying job

Candace Whisenant is now giving away the expertise for which she used to get paid. Whisenant lost her job as a human resources manager for Belk in early February. She wants to work outside retail, she said, but wants to put what she knows to good use.

Last Saturday, she worked her first shift at the Durham chapter of Dress for Success, which helps women prepare for job interviews by giving them clothes, accessories, training in interview techniques and other assistance.

“Because I am a human resource professional, I know the expectations of an interviewer and a recruiter,” Whisenant said. “I do want to see how I can use my experience in another industry, but mostly I want to give back and utilize the skills that I have.”

Volunteer organizers say they don’t know how long they will have this labor largesse, but they’re enjoying it while it lasts.

“People are using this as an opportunity to chase a dream that they have always had,” said Marie Johnson, manager of volunteer and community service at the Raleigh campus of WakeMed.

When people go back to work, she hopes some of her volunteers will continue to be involved.

More time to help

Mitchell has been coming to WakeMed with Sarah, her affable Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, since 2004, part of a hospital program that lets patients, doctors and staff get a regular dose of fuzz therapy. But the long hours of Mitchell’s job limited the amount of time she could give.

When she was laid off — on her 10th anniversary with the company — Mitchell decided that just because she wasn’t being paid for her time didn’t mean it couldn’t be productive. She enrolled her other dog, Luke, in the program, took him through the training and now reports with him at WakeMed every Friday morning.

“It’s very rewarding,” Mitchell said. “The patients, the ones who are on monitors, you can actually watch their blood pressure drop when they rub on the dog. Some people will say, ‘Gee, that’s the first time I’ve smiled all day.’ ”

By Martha Quillin – Staff writer
Newsobserver.com

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals in need of funding – not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

Charitable organizations say they are benefiting from a class of skilled volunteers ready to lend their expertise to a cause. And volunteering is giving out-of-work professionals the opportunity to develop skills, as well as network for job contacts in the process. For some people, it may even mean a new career when the economy does turn around.

Officials at Habitat for Humanity, like many others taking advantage of laid-off help, say they are looking for volunteers with managerial, public-relations and communications experience, in addition to volunteers who want to swing a hammer. “For us, we are really trying to use this time as an opportunity to emphasize to volunteers that we do more than building,” says Desiree Adaway, senior director of volunteer mobilization for Habitat, a nonprofit that builds houses for families in need.

View Full Image
Volunteer
Tom Hamilton for The Wall Street Journal

Rick Overton has found that helping others benefits himself as well.
Volunteer
Volunteer

Neva Geisler, director of volunteer engagement for the United Way of Treasure Valley, in Boise, Idaho, says this year’s volunteers are highly skilled and educated, with many having global work experience. “Some are fantastic resources that we could never afford to hire,” Ms. Geisler says.

To be sure, many nonprofits are struggling despite the influx of volunteers. A January survey of nearly 22,000 individual donors by Cygnus Applied Research, a market research and fund-raising company for not-for-profits, found that 17.5% of donors planned to decrease the value of their donations in 2009 and 30% were undecided.

“Things are really grim” for nonprofits, says Todd Cohen, editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal. “The value of endowments is down, the value of individual investments is down, and nonprofit costs are up, as well as demand for services.”

Still, laid-off workers can make a difference. Laine Seaton, who was laid off from her development-management position for an Arizona nonprofit in December, now volunteers about 35 hours a week at five nonprofits. She says that beyond supporting causes she cares about, she’s been able to bolster skills that will help her find a new position.
Laid Off and Looking

* Follow eight out-of-work M.B.A.s as they search for jobs in a post-meltdown world.

Her volunteer work with the North Country Conservancy involves setting up a fund-raising plan, grant writing and strategic planning. “In a regular job, you’d need to be a director or management staff to be able to do these types of things, but on a volunteer basis, they welcome the help,” says Ms. Seaton, 41, who says she plans to add these skills to her résumé and tout them in interviews.

For some, volunteering has offered a sense of purpose and connection, while brightening their outlook. Rick Overton, a 41-year-old from Boise, Idaho, who was laid off from a copywriting position in July, struggled with the psychological impact of being laid off. In February, he began volunteering with the United Way, and says the experience has improved his outlook on unemployment. “It’s hard to describe how much better it feels to get to the end of the day and, even if you haven’t made any money, feel like you did some good for the world,” he says. Most recently, Mr. Overton worked with the group on a project designed to help enroll at-risk pre-kindergartners into a program that prepares them for school.

Some nonprofits are even advertising the benefits of volunteer work to the newly laid off. The Web site of the American Red Cross’s Denver branch notes that volunteering for the organization helps job hunters learn critical new skills, increase their network of contacts and “introduce a little sanity” into their job hunt.

That’s part of what attracted Alexandra Lee, a 25-year-old who was recently laid off from a marketing position, to the organization. She’s volunteering in the Denver Red Cross’s public-relations department and says the work helps her cope with the drudgery of finding a new job. “I’m really extroverted, and if I sat at home all day writing cover letters and resumes, I’d be depressed,” says Ms. Lee. What’s more, she says, her efforts have been a good conversation starter for networking. “At first I was humiliated to say, ‘I’ve been laid off.’ But now I have work I’m doing,” says Ms. Lee, who gives about 20 hours of her time a week.
[Benefits of Volunteering]

And, true to the pitch, Ms. Lee says she has been exposed to elements of marketing she wasn’t involved in before, like analysis of market research. In a recent job interview, Ms. Lee was able to speak about measuring viral-marketing efforts. “My volunteer work seems to be falling in place perfectly for some job opportunities,” she says.

Volunteers can catch the eye of board members — who are often corporate executives or senior managers — looking for employees. “If a volunteer comes to our attention with a particular skill set, and we know someone on our board is looking for someone, we’d help that person any way we can,” says Robert Wilson, major-gifts manager for Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana.

Donating time is also a good introduction to the culture of nonprofits, where volunteers are more accustomed to doing things on a small budget. That gives them an edge over someone from the for-profit community when applying for a paid position, says the United Way’s Ms. Geisler. “You have to have a duct-tape approach to things,” she says.

Heather Joseph, volunteer manager for the Food Bank for New York City, says that in December, her organization received phone calls from people laid off in the financial-services industry. Now, they’re looking to volunteer in hopes of changing careers to the nonprofit sector. One person will be volunteering on the organization’s upcoming gala, helping with registration, the auction and other aspects of the event.

“Volunteering is the best way I know how to break into a nonprofit,” says Enid Borden, Meals On Wheels Association of America chief executive.

And though some nonprofits are worried that volunteers will scale back once the economy improves, most are hopeful that corporations and young people will fill the gap. Ms. Borden says there has been a discernible uptick in interest from younger workers, which should help the organization should other volunteers scale back.

By DANA MATTIOLI
Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com