Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/smart-use-of-volunteers/5018428/
Volunteers pose a special area of concern for child care centers. On one hand, they are indispensable as they donate countless hours of time, energy, and resources. On the other hand, there are challenges to coordinating the efforts of volunteering parents.Benefits
Volunteer parents bring in snacks, do work, drive or chaperone on field trips, coordinate festivals, and help in a variety of ways. Usually the center staff just needs to ask and there will be parents who answer the call. The manpower hours they provide can be significant when added together over the course of a year. If a center had to pay staff members to accomplish the same tasks, it would cost thousands of dollars! Add in the donations of food, toys, clothes, decorations, books, and other resources, and the size of volunteers’ contributions skyrockets! There are other less-visible benefits of volunteering, for both parents and center staff. When parents volunteer, they:
• Meet the children and acquire more knowledge about their own children’s learning environment.
• Learn more about the structure and operations of the center, which helps them to identify organizational rules and constraints. More knowledgeable parents make it easier for center administrators to implement practices and policies when ...