The volunteering that Wally and Auntie Kay did was either church related or fruit farm related. I don’t recall them doing anything outside of those theaters. In their day there wasn’t the thousands of charitable organizations that we have today.
This past week-end, Nelly and I volunteered for a charity at a casino. The charity provided the staffing for the transaction end of the casino, positions such as banker, cashier, chip runner, and cash counter ( an end of the night position). Any positions unfilled by the charity are filled by “angels” who regularly volunteer at any casino where ever they are needed. All the positions are over seen by paid casino employees.
Every day of the week for three months, different charities provide volunteer staff and the casino shares the accumulated winnings with those charities at the end of the three months. The last time I volunteered at that particular casino, the charity I worked for received $80,000.00.
Because there are so many charities clamoring for volunteer space, each one is only allowed to send volunteers every 2 years.
The larger charities will work a week-end while the smaller ones work less during the week.
My portion of the shift was from 11 PM to 3:30 AM. I was in the cash counting room with 7 others, 4 being “angels”. The “angels” were all people who don’t sleep much at night so they volunteer instead and are happy to do it.
One other thing that each charity does is to provide a meal to each volunteer. The casino food is priced low. For example, Sunday night I had prime rib at a cost of $10.00. Even though the food was served at the end of the night it was still very good. The portion was not overly large, but then there was no waste.
When I consider how I spent my week-end, I find myself wanting more of a sense of community, which is something I haven’t found in a casino. When Wally and Auntie Kay volunteered, they had that sense of community, for they knew the people they worked with and they were committed to supporting those people.