By Amanda Akers, Morton
My son, Lex, and I volunteered for the first time with the Special Olympics Illinois. I’ve done some volunteering in the past with other organizations, but got busy with motherhood and my career. Now that my son is 10 years old, I decided a while back that I needed to share the experience of volunteering with him in the future. So, this past Sunday we volunteered with SOILL at the District E Basketball Tournament at the Shirk Center in Bloomington.
We had an AWESOME experience. I shared a couple of photos over Twitter and received a response that I should share more with you. My son and I volunteered to work the lunch shift. I am a team lead at my day job (at State Farm Insurance Companies) and found it a lot of fun to use that experience to lead some of the other volunteers we were paired up with. It is hard to turn that off and I think it came in handy. So, that was really enjoyable for me. I also feel like my son and I got to meet SO many people because hundreds came through our Avanti’s lunch “assembly line.” That was such a joy. And, even though my son was away from his video games for hours on Sunday, he mentioned several times how much fun he was having.
I asked him to commit to looking for a volunteer opportunity with me through your organization every month or every other month. We definitely want to help again in the future. I’m sure you have heard this before and it sounds slightly cliché, but you definitely do get more back than you give. I just can’t say enough about how full my heart was when we left!
Thank you for the opportunity!