Volunteers

Camp volunteers with "Thank you" signsGeneral Information

For any questions concerning volunteering or volunteer opportunities at the Wendt Center please call Kecia Hill, Volunteer Coordinator on 202-204-5025 or email.

Download a General Volunteer Application

Camp Volunteer Opportunities include:

  • To be a "Buddy" to a camper
  • Grief Group Assistants and Respite Buddies
  • Help with pre-camp preparations as part of our Camp Volunteer Committee, fundraising, administrative tasks, etc.

Click here to view our Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin page

Join our “Lights of Hope” Team

The Lights of Hope Program provides candlelight vigils to families in the Washington Metropolitan area regardless of the cause of death. Trainings are designed to teach volunteers how to facilitate, manage on-site coordination and provide grief support during a candlelight vigil. Training modules are 2 hours in length from 6:30pm-8:30pm. Please click here for registration form. Completed registration forms should be emailed to Kecia Hill, Volunteer Coordinator at Khill@wendtcenter.org or faxed to her attention at 202-624-0062.

2012 TRAINING DATES:

  • Monday, June 25, 2012 – Registration Deadline: Friday, June 15, 2012

ADMIN NIGHTS

Admin Nights are monthly opportunities for volunteers and potential volunteers to provide administrative support at the center. Volunteers assimilate various brochures, pamphlets, training materials, marketing packages and clinical files that are distributed throughout the Center’s three offices and the RECOVER program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s office. You DO NOT need to be a Wendt Center Volunteer to help out! Please contact Kecia Hill, Volunteer Coordinator at khill@wendtcenter.org or call 202-204-5025 if you would like to help at an ADMIN NIGHT!

2012 ADMIN NIGHTS:

  • Wednesday, April 25th
  • Wednesday, May 30th
  • Wednesday, June 27th

DC Crisis Response Team

  • Provide emotional comfort to family members
  • Provide crisis intervention and grief support
  • Assist with funeral planning and burial arrangement
  • Coordinate memorials and candle light vigils
  • Provide prayer or spiritual support
  • Check in with the family during first 6-8 weeks to see how they are doing

Grief Groups

  • Assist clinicians with child, teen and adult groups at main and satellite offices
  • Lead groups if you have a mental health degree

Companion

  • Support an individual or family who is grieving, at a place and time convenient to the volunteer and client

Program Support

  • Provide administrative assistance in the office, including phones, mailings, etc.
  • Lend professional artistic skills, such as music, art, playback theater, dance
  • Help with art projects, graphic design, visual displays
  • Assist with fundraising efforts, including the Annual Benefit

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Work, school and family pressures can seem unbearable to people facing illness, loss and death. Many in our community do not have family members nearby to turn to for support and may feel isolated and alone. They may be afraid to depend too heavily on friends and neighbors who are grappling with their own grief or feel uncomfortable with discussing the difficult issues of illness and death. The end result is that many people face their grief with little support or understanding.

Wendt Center volunteers can provide confidential support, free of charge, to children, adolescents, adults, families, friends and caregivers who are impacted by life-threatening illness or death. Our volunteers are trained by the Wendt Center professional mental health staff. They can listen, help, play and emotionally support those who are ill or grieving. They are not in the business of giving advice, solutions or cures, but rather of sharing the pain and experience of loss and grief and of celebrating life in the midst of illness and death. Our volunteers are of all ages and from diverse backgrounds and are respectful of cultural and spiritual orientations. Volunteers may meet clients at a time and place of mutual convenience. Some examples of services our volunteers are providing:

  • Driving a woman to the cemetery to visit her child’s grave
  • Caring for and playing with young children at the Wendt Center for 50 minutes, while a parent attends to his/her grief therapy
  • Helping terminally ill clients prepare a will and attend to other personal affairs
  • Mentoring and providing academic support (help with homework) to individual child and teen clients

Some of our volunteers assist with our adult and child grief groups. Special training, given by Wendt Center clinical staff members, is required before a volunteer can participate in a group.

Volunteers also play an important role in the operations of the Wendt Center by working in the office to help with our many mailings or with the hard work of preparing for our children’s weekend grief camp, Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC.

For more information on Volunteer opportunities please contact Kecia Hill, at 202.204-5025 or email .

Thank you volunteers for all of your hard work and support!

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