Thursday was our first Monthly Volunteer Meeting for all the zoo volunteers. The Alaska Zoo has appointed Shannon Jenson as Volunteer Coordinator, helping out the education department. Katie Larson is still the Education Director, and Amber Mount is still her assistant, but with everything going on they felt it would be best to have somebody else coordinate all the volunteers.
Shannon has implemented quite a few changes in the way volunteers are handled; some of which are good changes, some of which will take a bit of getting used to. The most obvious change is her plan to have these monthly meetings; a thing that was once tried, but it never really got off the ground.
Thursday's meeting was held at the BP Energy Center, since they have room for everybody (and the zoo currently does not, although that will change once their new entrance building is built) and the cost is within the zoo’s budget (as in: it was free). Speaking of budgets, the zoo really does have one set aside for the volunteer program: $100.00 a month. With this, Shannon is expected to handle not only the volunteers she now has (about 25 or so) but also the 25 of so more she wants to recruit!
Anyway, back to the meeting: it was a success in that a lot of people showed up (about 17 in all), but I do think the whole process will need some fine-tuning before getting it exactly right. First, Shannon spent quite a bit of her budget on munchies: chicken wraps, Cheetoes, Doritos, trail mix, and soda. At first thought, this was a good idea: give the volunteers something to munch on since you’re asking them to give up 2 hours of an evening when they could be at home eating a home-cooked meal (yeah, right). But in actuality, hardly any of the food got eaten so there was quite a bit of leftovers. I’m sure the food eventually got eaten (just take it to the zoo; the keepers there will eat it in no time), but there’s no point in blowing your budget on food that no body wants.
Second, Shannon intended to show a video that she and John Gomes, the unofficial photographer for the zoo, are working on for recruitment of new volunteers. However, she neglected to see if the video player provided by BP would work, so she ended up spending a good 10 minutes fiddling with it and never did get to show us the video!
She did have a lot of good ideas, like I said. One thing was to hand out new badges to everybody. They’re real spiffy badges, too. Much nicer than some of the badges I’ve had in the past. She also told us that the zoo is planning on giving the volunteers jackets with the zoo logo, as well as t-shirts with the word "Volunteer" written across the back to identify us while we’re at the zoo. Not too shabby! She also implemented a sign-in sheet again. The zoo needs to track the hours that volunteers spend so they can claim it correctly on their taxes. They also need to see how many hours we spend, so they can better appreciate the job we do! This is, however, one of the ideas that will take a bit of getting used to. I’m not in the habit of checking in each time I do something for the zoo.
Shannon’s worst idea by far, at least in my humble opinion (and it may just be that I am not one for change: I like things just the way they are!), is the new Volunteer Opportunity Sign-up sheet. No longer will I be getting the occasional phone call from Katie, Amber, or Shannon asking me if I can help out with a special tour or a critter table off site. Now, I am expected to check their Volunteer Opportunity Sign-up page on the website, and actually volunteer for the events I’m interested in on my own initiative! The nerve of them! As I said, this will take a bit of getting used to.
For a special treat that night, we got a visitor in the middle of our meeting. Liz, one of the zookeepers, brought Trini in to see us. Trini is our silver fox, and is one of the education animals. This means that she goes out to schools and whatnot to help educate people on animals. She was very excited to be out and about that night. She’s been on medical leave recently, due to an injury to her hind leg that is being treated by our vet, Dr. Riley, and this was her first time out in several months. She is a cute little thing, that’s for sure. She is only about 7 years old, much younger than I had thought. Liz told us her story
Most of the rest of the time was spent getting to know everybody, and talking about some of the opportunities available to zoo volunteers. We talked about different techniques used on-site or off-grounds, about how to handle difficult people, or just some of the different experiences we’d each had. Eventually, we broke up and headed on home.
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