SwiftLink is putting together a team of volunteers who can help meet some local needs.
The local volunteer group has started a program called Community Connection.
"The idea is that there's lots of great people in our community that want to help," said SwiftLink member Val Choo-Foo. "But sometimes we just don't know how to help or who needs help. The whole idea is that right now the needs are requests are going to come in from local agencies. That could be any nonprofit agency that maybe has a need. That need goes through a process where we send out an e-mail to all the volunteers that we have in our database, and then if there's somebody who thinks they can claim or reply and meet that need, they will claim it."
For now the program is starting small and just going through Choo-Foo's email.
"The cool thing about this is the more volunteers that we get, more people obviously make it easier to meet the needs that come in," she noted. "There is no obligation that when a need comes in, you must respond to it. You can read it and say we're not available. That's not something that we can meet. Hopefully somebody in the database will be able to meet it."
They've been running the program with a smaller group for a few months now.
"A few needs that we have met," Choo-Foo said. "For example, Southwest Homes had some furniture that needed to be delivered from one home to another, and so they were looking for a truck or a trailer to help move it. Also, Southwest Homes had some stuff that needed to be taken out to the dump. We had one where there was some yard work that needed to be done. There's lots of different needs, obviously, as you can imagine, and we're hoping that this is a way that we can get our community involved."
Choo-Foo estimated they have a mailing list with 20 e-mail addresses. She added that some of them link to larger groups like a church so they can access more people than that.
You don't need a specific skillset to get involved.
"All skill sets, all people, don't feel you're too young or too old," Choo-Foo said. "It doesn't really matter what the skill set is because we don't know specifically the need that comes in. Maybe it'll be somebody playing cards with somebody for an hour in the afternoon. Maybe it's cleaning up someone's backyard. We hope this will grow, and the more needs that come in, the more volunteers we have, we can meet those needs."
If you're interested in learning more about the program or getting involved, you can email l.v.choofoo@sasktel.net.