Training Volunteers for Community Service Pkg

Volunteers-skilled, sensitive, and filled with integrity, sincerity, and perseverance-are often a vital component to the success of any thriving service organization. Their tasks are at the very heart of the organization and communities they serve, yet most volunteers receive little or no formal training before their first assignment. Training Volunteers for Community Service is a much-needed manual for leaders who are charged with the task of training, and preserving, their organization's most valuable asset . . . its volunteers. Techniques presented in this manual are based on expertise gained over 25 years of training, managing, and retaining 12,000 volunteers at San Francisco's Shanti, an internationally recognized provider of volunteer training and direct services to those with chronic and life-threatening illness. Sixteen program modules enable volunteer managers to train their volunteers to provide high quality, compassionate service while increasing volunteer retention. Comprehensive and flexible, Training Volunteers for Community Service is a step-by-step guide for creating a training program that is sourced in an understanding of volunteers' primary motivations and offers trainees a uniquely rewarding training experience. The Trainer's Guide and Participant's Workbook provide methods for instructing volunteers in critical issues-such as listening and communication, psychosocial issues, the volunteer/client relationship, cultural diversity-and offers the tools and information agencies need to train, motivate, and retain volunteers.

About the Author :
CHARLES GARFIELD is founder of Shanti and the Shanti National Training Institute (SNTI). Dr. Garfield continues to write, train volunteer managers and volunteers, and lead workshops on the effective use of volunteers for community service throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is clinical professor of psychology at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco and is the author of the best-selling Peak Performers: The New Heroes of American Business, Sometimes My Heart Goes Numb: Love and Caregiving in a Time of AIDS, and eight other books. CAROL KLEINMAIER, an expert in training and volunteer management, is director of the Shanti National Training Institute, where she developed the curriculum for SNTI's volunteer training and volunteer management workshop. She has participated in the training of more than 5,000 volunteers, and presented workshops nationwide on the psychosocial issues of the chronically ill.

Review :
"This eminently practical and highly comprehensive guide to training volunteers is an effective, thorough, and important program that enables committed volunteers to serve those in need with distinction. Each of the training exercises is carefully selected to teach skills, build community, and offer deeply rewarding life experiences to volunteers." (Craig Franz, president, St. Mary's College of California) "Any person involved in the training of volunteers will read, reread, and constantly refer to this text. Shanti has produced what will surely become the standard by which all subsequent books are measured. Well done!" (Larry Drury, executive director, National Federation of Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers) "Training Volunteers for Community Service: The Step-by-Step Guide of the Shanti National Training Institute makes available an extraordinary resource for training volunteers to provide quality, compassionate care. Its publication clearly positions the Shanti National Training Institute on the cutting edge in the field of professional volunteer management. There are opportunities here, too, to learn invaluable lessons about commitment to a mission, self-motivation, intrinsic rewards, self-management, and a higher standard of leadership that can be put to use in the corporate workplace." (Tim Hanlon, president, Wells Fargo Foundation)