Third Place Winner

I started volunteering with Rosehedge / Multifaith Works this past spring, drawn by a Craigslist ad for the CareTeam and Shanti programs. Like the last volunteer to write on this blog, I came to RH/MFW because I felt my life was missing something; I didn’t feel as though I was actually helping people, no matter how many hours I worked at my job or how many one-off food-bank volunteer sessions I went to. I wanted to be doing something meaningful, helpful, and consistent. The opening offered by RH/MFW was simple; I could make a difference to someone just be being there. Rocket-scientist skills were not required: just the ability to listen, and the willingness to care. So I got in touch with the office, completed a stirring weekend of CareTeam training, and helped out with some office tasks while waiting for placement on a CareTeam. During that period, and since being assigned to a team, the overall character of the organization and the people it includes (staff, clients, and volunteers) has struck me as phenomenal. Part of the RH/MFW mission is to “…unite communities of compassionate care and inclusive spirituality with people living in isolation and loneliness.” From my perspective – I’d been bummed out, an East-Coaster transplanted to Seattle, far from family – the organization lives this mission so thoroughly and with such integrity that it offers compassion, care, and inclusiveness not only to clients but even to volunteers.

After several weeks working in the office, I got assigned to a CareTeam -- and what a CareTeam I got! We volunteer at one of the organization’s adult family homes; we have six team members (and growing), and a whopping twelve wonderful CarePartners. The team, the Partners, and the overall experience are more complex and more rewarding than I could have imagined. Since our Partners and their housing services are subject to regulation by the public health department, we as a CareTeam can fill a special place in their lives. I’ve found it hard to articulate this, but here’s the best analogy that comes to mind (from the Third Place Books website, at http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/about):

“Sociologist Ray Oldenberg suggests that each of us needs three places: first is the home; second is the workplace or school; and beyond lies the place where people from all walks of life interact, experiencing and celebrating their commonality as well as their diversity. It is a third place.”

As a CareTeam, we are that third place. We are the people that are neither staff nor family, but somewhere comfortably in between. We’re a third group -- reliable yet not reliant, present but not pressing. We’re simply there, to whatever extent the Partners need or want us, to experience and celebrate our commonality as well as our diversity. Modern society, state-run systems and big-city life can feel disjointed and impersonal, yet RH/MFW has created a village of care in the midst of an otherwise inattentive metropolis. I am grateful to be part of it.

Kelly Cunningham
Volunteer