Holiday season promotes giving, volunteer work

Column by Grover Welch, Herald Staff

This Holiday season can provide opportunities for students to share their spirit with others.

Places in the Jonesboro community are looking for holiday help to work with children. Some jobs involve working with animals at shelters and others require dressing like an elf or Santa.

Whatever you decide to do, the experience will introduce you to new people.
Some places you can look into are churches, daycares and The United Way.

Some opportunities are:

- This year the Main Street Winter Wonderland is open to the public again. . It's open during the week to visitors and is always in need of volunteers to help guide visitors and keep the building clean.

- For animal lovers, the big push is to get animals in the shelters out to people who will adopt them. The Animal Farm on U.S. Highway 351 toward Paragould is looking for volunteers to work with animals. They're also looking to increase volunteers that join them at PETCO.

- St. Bernards Medical Center provides hospice to the sick and their families. For more information call St. Bernards at 972-4100.

- St. Bernards also participates in the annual Holiday meal, a free community dinner that is open to the public. Students can volunteer to help cook or serve.

However you choose to participate in your community this season, I hope you make a difference. Since the Sept. 11 attacks more than 40 percent of Americans have volunteered in some sort of community capacity.

These types of selfless acts make the spirit of Christmas come alive within us all.

Grover Welch is a junior English major of Cynthiana, Ky.