R is for Recruitment

This January, I will travel for the fourth time to El Progreso, Honduras as a service trip team leader. My team and I will spend a week constructing homes and a sanitation system, visiting orphanages, and learning about the causes of socioeconomic inequality in Honduras. My history with Students Helping Honduras (excluding my staff experience in May 2009) is detailed in a prior blog, but my present is best described as stateside guerilla warfare recruitment. I fully intend to double the amount of students I bring this winter, with no regard to age, grade, or experience. Inspired or terrified by my recruitment strategy, Shin Fujiyama, founder and chief executive of Students Helping Honduras, has asked me to submit a short presentation on volunteer recruitment for the organization’s leadership summit this weekend. The following bulleted points comprise my Recruitment Attitude and Philosophy:

• Students Helping Honduras is not afraid.
• We welcome volunteers from all sectors of every campus community.
• We welcome volunteers who may be stereotyped as elitist or selfish based on Greek affiliations, sports teams, appearance, or other factors.
• We welcome volunteers both inside and outside the “traditional” service community. Students Helping Honduras believes that each volunteer, regardless of experience or background, is capable of learning and doing good for those whom they serve.
• Students Helping Honduras is tolerant, inclusive, and accepting of volunteers who have never been exposed to Progreso-level poverty or the emotionally and physically exhausting work required of volunteers.
• Students Helping Honduras is a deliberate organization.
• We identify student leaders and understand that relying on magnetic personalities is often the best way to initially attract students to volunteer.
• Service is sexy. Following your crush to Honduras is completely reasonable.
• Students Helping Honduras welcomes mutual enlightenment.
• As volunteers learn and become connected to projects in Progreso, staff members and trip leaders also learn and become connected to volunteers.
• Our stateside chapters are only cohesive if volunteers have a reason to invest time and energy once distanced from El Progreso.

Interested? Inspired? Free from January 9-16, 2010 and ready to change lives, including your own? Join the team, build relationships, transform, and be transformed. You’ve never volunteered like this before.

Go Tribe,

Bailey