Co-oping at The Co-op
How do you get your families so involved? I get asked often regarding the level of commitment from the families in our program. It’s a deliberate process and it starts with building partnerships through volunteer opportunities. Any parent of young children will tell you that they are eager to help but don’t know where to start. When asked directly or expected to volunteer, parents step up!
We require every family to provide 15 hours of volunteer service throughout the year. They are welcome to participate in any way that they are most comfortable. Eager to have little ones climb on top of you while you read stories? Come on! Play an instrument and want to lead the band? Come on! Just want to stockpile all your recyclables and keep us stocked up? Bring it! Come with us on family outings and represent our program out in the community, come during your lunch break and feed your nursing infant, help us find tree stumps and milk crates, help us with fundraising… there are so many ways to volunteer but the biggest way to make an impact is to attend our parent workdays.
Once in the spring and once in the fall we all (parents and staff) come together on a Saturday morning to work together on various tasks. The staff and I come up with a huge list of things that need to get done, things like washing windows, painting bathrooms, hauling sand, building new equipment, and everything in between. No matter the skill set of the family member, there is something to do. My job is to create a poster checklist of everything we’d like accomplished, to have all the materials needed to complete all the tasks, and to answer all the questions. My staff’s job is to care for the children while the parents complete the tasks. The parents’ jobs are to work together to complete the tasks. Once all the tasks are complete, we all come together for crawfish (in the spring) or barbecue (in the fall). Help with collecting material donations or fundraising is valuable and necessary and creates a connection to the program. We want to take it a step further by providing a social connection that is crucial to creating a cooperative environment and a commitment to the program. You have to get messy, sweat, and laugh together to build that atmosphere. We are a family here – parents, staff, and children; and if you don’t know other families when you enroll, you’ll soon make new friends no matter how old you are and that’s how you co-op at The Co-op.
