The Wichita Eagle
Rick Plumlee
Josephe Boggess, 8, has been a volunteer for quite a while.
At home, he volunteers to wash the dishes and take out the trash.
But Thursday evening Joseph saw an expanded version of volunteering.
He joined his mother, Robin, and about 300 others in washing 400 chairs at Exploration Place.
“I like washing chairs,” Joseph said. “It goes fast.”
Robin Boggess looked her son and grinned.
“I brought him along to see how the community can come together,” she said. “Team effort makes it so much easier.”
That’s just the point Volunteer Kansas was trying to make Thursday. The chair-washing at the science museum was used to launch the organization, which has set up a website to connect volunteers with member agencies in need of help.
“We built this website so you can help other Kansans,” Nola Brown, Volunteer Kansas executive director, told the gathering before the scrubbing began.
Stacy Parkinson, wife of the Kansas governor, came to her hometown to show her support for the website, volunteerkansas.org, and address the crowd.
“Service to others is an important part of a life well lived,” she said. “We all know that solutions to these economic uncertain times can’t come from Washington alone.”
Parkinson said that she and her husband, Mark, have tried to instill volunteering in their children. That included running an assisted-living center at one time.
“Our children told people they were raised in a nursing home,” Stacy Parkinson said. “We did spend a lot of time there.”
She said the Parkinsons and two other families served holiday meals at the center.
“I mostly wanted to get out of cooking,” she said.
One of the goals of Volunteer Kansas is to move the state’s volunteer rate to No. 1 in the nation.
A federal report released in June said that almost 36 percent of Kansans volunteer, ranking the state eighth nationally in the percent of residents age 16 and older who do volunteer work with formal organizations.
Kansas needs about 70,000 more volunteers to reach No. 1. The national volunteer rate is 26.8 percent.
“We can make our state stronger and better than ever,” Parkinson said.
With that, suds began to flow. Folks used rags and soapy water to wash the plastic chairs outside the museum.
“It gives you purpose,” said Vince Wesolowsky after finishing a chair.
He and his wife, Joan, have volunteered for years.
“Many hands make little work,” Joan Wesolowsky said.
Brown said she chose the chair-washing as the kickoff event because it allowed people to do something hands-on while giving them a chance to meet one another as they worked.
“We want people to connect,” she said.
Brown said Volunteer Kansas’ website can be used in three ways:
* To volunteer;
* As a place to exchange information, letting volunteers know where they can help and where agencies can find volunteers;
* To donate money, making microgrants between $5 and $2,000.
The website is a centralized site to help people in Wichita and eventually all of Kansas, Brown said.
The idea originated with Wichitans Barry and Paula Downing, whose foundation provided a grant to get Volunteer Kansas started.
Eight Wichita organizations are now on the site: Catholic Charities, Exploration Place, Habitat for Humanity, Kansas Humane Society, Salvation Army, Sedgwick County Zoo, Wichita Festivals and Youthville.
Brown said there isn’t a set number of agencies she wants to add to the site but that Volunteer Kansas is hand-picking the groups.
“We’re making sure we’re including agencies that are very reputable, she said, “because we don’t want volunteers to have a bad experience.”
Some of the agencies signed up with Volunteer Kansas also participate in United Way of the Plains’ volunteer center.
United Way of the Plains has 393 agencies in the Wichita area seeking volunteers and also has a website that can be used to connect volunteers and needs.
The two groups met about a year ago in hopes of working together.
“We thought together we could have a more powerful effort,” said Pat Hanrahan, president of United Way of the Plains, “but they decided to go off and do their own thing.”
Brown said, “We weren’t able to come to any kind of an agreement. We both have the same goal. We’re both trying to increase volunteerism.
“So we don’t see it as any kind of conflict. It’s just going to be a mutually beneficial thing for everybody to get more people involved in volunteering.”
The number of those willing to volunteer is increasing, even as the need grows.
Hanrahan said the United Way of the Plains referred 8,124 volunteers to Wichita-area agencies in 2009, well above the 5,000 or so from five years ago. There are eight other United Way volunteer centers in Kansas.
“There are opportunities out there for more volunteers,” he said.
During Thursday’s event, Stacy Parkinson also presented two “Points of Light” from the state.
One went to the St. Anthony Family Shelter, which is operated by Catholic Charities. It has served 4,500 homeless families since 1988.
The other award went to Edia Gonzalez, a court-watch volunteer who has been an advocate for DUI victims since September 2009.
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