New year presents opportunities to volunteer

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Are you a resolution maker? Is this the time of year when you step back, take stock, and decide just what and how you might change, or improve, in your life or that of another?

If you are a resolution maker and you would like to make a difference this year, here are some excellent opportunities for you to consider.

Mary Marin Lyon, executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Bangor, suggests you “make a New Year’s resolution and change an adult’s life forever” by participating in LV-Bangor programs.

Literacy Volunteers of Bangor will offer basic literacy tutor training sessions for people who are interested in helping adults improve their reading.

Lyon wrote that while “tutoring an adult in reading” takes just “a few hours a week,” that the “positive effects, for that adult, last a lifetime.”

LV-Bangor will offer its next tutor training from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesdays, beginning Jan. 16, and continuing on the following Wednesdays: Jan. 23, Jan. 30, Feb. 6 and Feb. 13, at United Technologies Center, 200 Hogan Road in Bangor.

To participate, you must call LV-Bangor at 947-8451 to register for the course.

The cost for the course materials is $25, but scholarships are available for those who can’t afford the fee, Lyon wrote.

Lyon wants readers to know that, in eastern Maine, one in three people has low literacy and can read only at a fifth-grade level, or has never learned to read at all.

She urges you to “make that New Year’s resolution and commit to volunteering in our community today.”

People interested in improving their reading and who want to know how get a tutor may call the number for more information.

Perhaps this year you will decide to help people in distress.

Sue Currie of Rape Response Services in Bangor wants to know whether you have “thought about your New Year’s resolution” and, if you haven’t, then Currie has “just the opportunity for you,” she wrote.

“If you are a good listener; want to be part of a great team; and make a real difference in people’s lives,” Currie wrote, you may just find that Rape Response Services is right for you.

RRS is offering training for volunteer hot line advocates from 5 to 8 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, for six weeks beginning Monday, Jan. 28, and continuing through Thursday, March 6.

“We will cover topics such as crisis intervention, myths and facts, the legal system, hospital response, and community resources,” Currie said.

For more information, e-mail rrscsc@rrsonline.org or call Currie at 941-2980 by the registration deadline, Friday, Jan. 18.

Currie will be happy to talk with you “about all the great work our volunteer advocates do to help those affected by sexual violence/abuse.”

Maybe you are one who wants to do something to assist in the fight against cancer.

If that is your area of volunteer interest, you might resolve to attend the American Cancer Society Relay for Life of Old Town Kick-Off Rally, which is 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24, at the Bangor Banquet and Conference Center, 713 Hogan Road.

The event includes dinner.

Susan Clifford of the ACS office in Topsham encourages “anyone interested in joining the planning committee, becoming a team captain, volunteering, or just finding out more about Relay for Life,” of Old Town, to attend.

Relay teams can represent “families, clubs, religious and civic organizations, neighborhoods and corporations,” Clifford wrote of the people who “will join the race to beat cancer by celebrating survivorship and taking turns walking around the track,” next May, at Old Town High School.

Clifford reports Relay for Life is the “largest, signature event, as well as the most successful, national fundraiser” for ACS.

Last year, more than $400 million was raised in more than 4,500 communities by more than 3.5 million participants celebrating a half-million cancer survivors.

Maine held 19 Relay for Life events in 2007, and raised more than $1.5 million for “cancer research, education, advocacy and patient services,” Clifford wrote.

Those funds also included “transportation for cancer patients to treatments, one-on-one support for women with breast cancer, cosmetologist consultations for women being treated for cancer; tobacco control education, and mammography outreach.”

For more information about Relay for Life of Old Town; how to become a volunteer; or to RSVP for this Relay Rally, call Mike Hart at 989-0332.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.