Volunteer - Asha Hope Amanaki

Volunteering with Asha Hope Amanaki: Nurturing Growth and Building Skills

ashahopeamanaki — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 19:34:35 +0000

Juanita Wei, has been a long term volunteer with Asha Hope Amanaki and is probably the first International Volunteer who has stayed with us for more than 6 months and started with a small role of making origami for International Day of Elders and made it all the way to Social Media Manger for Asha Hope Amanaki, handling a team of 3 other volunteers managing Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for Asha Hope Amanaki.

Alongside her pursuit of a Bachelor’s in of Arts in Sociology, Juanita can be reached out through here social media profiles on Facebook ,Instagram and LinkedIn, welcoming opportunities for further community giving.

Hi Juanita, Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Tell us a little about yourself to our readers(your town, your hobbies etc)?

My name is Juanita Wei. I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia and have not lived anywhere else my whole life.

My hobbies include art and writing, and I am particularly keen about media analysis; I also occasionally like to cafe-hop with my friends! I’ve also really liked animals since I was little, and since I never got the chance to have my own pet when I was little, I try to revitalize those childhood dreams today by volunteering for animal shelters; currently I’m a pen cleaner for Vancouver Rabbit Rescue and Advocacy.

There is so much nature in Vancouver and BC in general! If you take the time to venture out of the urban areas and explore Interior BC, you’ll see just how much forests and farmland we are surrounded by, and just how vast these lands stretch. Although it’s quite a disheartening time of year right now since there have been wildfires occurring not just here on the west coast but also in the east coast, I am reminded yet again of how much we must protect and cherish all this beautiful nature around us, especially in regards to mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Could you describe your volunteer role at Asha Hope Amanaki?

I initially started as an off-site volunteer who helped fold around 50 to 60 origami (folded paper-craft) cranes during the summer months for Asha Hope Amanaki as part of their International Day of Older People’s Day Project to gift thank you cards and personable gifts to those in senior homes, and felt like my involved with AHA was way too short-lived, so I decided to help out as a social media manager right after throughout the fall. This includes making videos, making graphics for posts, writing captions, holding volunteer interviews, communicating with others to get the photos and videos we need, and other miscellaneous tasks that help develop and advance our organization’s online presence and operations.

Right now, I have shifted into being a Social Media Coordinator and Marketing Coordinator, helping onboard, train, manage our team of Social Media Managers, in general making sure the whole department is running smoothly as possible. I’ve been here for about 9 or 10 months (since July or August 2022), and have really enjoyed my time here!

How did you find out about the Volunteer Opportunity?

I found the role through VolunteerMatch and took up the role because it was remote and lined up with my interests! What made it stand out from the other roles was its focus on folding origami, something I haven’t done since I was in elementary school, so I had a lot of fun reliving some fond childhood memories through this first experience.

How was your experience working with Asha Hope Amanaki and the volunteer opportunity in general?

I took some time to settle into the role, and at first seriously doubted myself; however, I’ve learned that this kind of apprehension during the start is really quite normal and part of the process of adjusting to a new pursuit–it’s uncomfortable, sure, but it’s a sign you’re learning and developing as a person!
It reminds me a little bit of my first days starting university, and I was quite uptight about following instructions as well as possible, not messing up, putting up a good first impression, both very nerve-wracking experiences. With time, of course, I learned to loosen up and believe in my own abilities, which helped me not be scared and pursue tasks outside of what my position may entail. For example, I made a volunteer orientation document to make the onboarding process more smooth for new volunteers, and that experience allowed me to break down and reconsider my own writing process, as I had to imagine myself as someone who had never used social media or any graphic design tools before, despite my familiarity with these topics.
I also took up video shooting and editing for the first time, and found this an extremely fun process! It’s very tedious to edit a video, and sometimes it feels like one big balancing act where one incorrect click could send the whole video into a new direction, and then I would have to start over, but seeing the finished result makes it all worth it! I’m glad Asha Hope Amanaki allowed me to try on several different hats and broaden my horizons on
a) what helping the community may include and
b) how much hard and soft skills I need to develop to succeed in my role.
Even if I made mistakes, they became learning experiences that I carried into my future actions, and I think that’s fundamental to both my professional and personal growth

Did volunteering on community projects help you in your job or career?

Yes, definitely! I’m hoping to go into digital marketing and communications in the future, and the skills I’ve learned during my time here were a big contributor to that. I also feel like the administrative skills I developed through navigating our content calendar and files also allowed me to expand my hard skills in that area.

What motivated you to volunteer?

I’ve always been interested and fascinated by graphic design skills and thought this would’ve been a great opportunity to sharpen and utilize my skills. Though I did not have much experience with digital marketing prior to this, I have always found myself being gravitated to roles where I could provide more “background”-oriented, foundational, support, and found great satisfaction and joy in being able to let other people’s journeys shine through these efforts. If I had to describe myself, I would also say I’m more of an introvert rather than an extrovert, even though I really like talking to people and learning about their life stories and motivations in life, I like to stray away from spotlight, which is why I think community work really suits my own disposition and personality. Of course, I’m really big on helping people and providing them the support they need to better their lives, and through my volunteer work with AHA, both in regards to our internal and external operations, I really feel like I’m doing that!

How did online format change your volunteer experience?

Since I was doing my school work and interacting with my friends and family mostly or entirely online when I joined Asha Hope Amanaki, it did not feel that different from my daily life at the time, and I didn’t really discern anything significant. However, when schools, organizations, restaurants, parks, etc., started re-opening, health orders started to relax, and we returned back to our “everyday” lives so-to-speak in interacting with others face-to-face, I felt the differences between in-person and virtual interactions more strongly. Because we rarely have as much social info in an online format, such as a person’s expression or their tone or voice (unless you set up a video call), that would help us discern their emotions or attitude, I made sure the way I used my language and addressed people clearly expressed my intents and emotions as best I can my using emojis and punctuation when applicable. I find that I also put more effort into maintaining an active line of communication, something I could do in-person by nodding my head or using a gesture. In this way, it sometimes feels more tiring and tedious to interact like this, but I think it’s a good habit to develop as it tells the other person you’re an active listener.

The post Volunteering with Asha Hope Amanaki: Nurturing Growth and Building Skills first appeared on Asha Hope Amanaki.

Learning STEM through programming

ashahopeamanaki — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:41:32 +0000

Drew is a volunteer mentor for Jaden Staten with Asha Hope Amanaki and has mentored a Compute Science at Jackson State University student to develop an automated tool post blogs from Google Sheet. The entire project was developed using Python and Selenium. Drew works as a MET at Intel Hillsboro. Here is a snipped of Drew’s volunteer experience with Asha Hope Amanaki as a part of our STEM Education blog series. You can also connect with Drew on LinkedIn.

Hi Drew, Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Tell us a little about yourself to our readers?

My name is Drew Aho. I am a Manufacturing Equipment Technician at Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon. I have been there for about a yaer now, but I have been programming various languages since I was thirteen, so I over a decade-plus of experience in programming.

How did you come to know about the STEM volunteer opportunity?

Intel uses a tool called Benevity, which is a volunteer opportunity posting board. If people have a volunteer opportunity they will post on it and those who are interested within Intel will apply for it. This opportunity fit well with my background in programming and hence I applied for it.

Could you describe your volunteer role at Asha Hope Amanaki?

Asha Hope Amanaki wanted an automated tool that could post blogs for them automatically through a form filled by volunteers. The tool was being developed by Jaden Staten and my responsibility was to provide feedback when the need arose or if he got stuck and provide pointers for improvement. He know what he was doing so it was easy to mentor him on the project.

What was the project that the two of you working on?

Asha Hope Amanaki wanted an automated tool that could post blogs for them automatically . This community project thus involved scarping Google Sheet that contained responses of volunteers to Google Forms sent to them. Using that data we had to create a WordPress post ensuring it is formatted properly ready to be published by the admin. The trickiest part was to ensure the data gets properly formatted to ensure the blog looks nice.

How was your experience working with Asha Hope Amanaki and the volunteer opportunity in general?

This was my first volunteer opportunity, so I had not come with a lot of expectations, however, overall it was positive and pleasant to be able to come in and help resolve issues. There was a new library called Selenium that I have never worked with. It is used to interact with web browser just like a human would to automate tasks. The documentation was good, so it was easy to learn it.

Although you were a STEM Mentor, did you get to learn anything from this experience?

Most certainly Communication! Due to the virtual nature of the opportunity there were challenges discussing issues on the digital screen. I had to be more communicative to ensure i was able to convey my message to Jaden in a way that made sense.

Did volunteering on a STEM project help you in your job or career?

Unfortunately, for my current role, there is no prerequisite for programming whatsoever. Programming right now is more like a hobby. in that sense it did help me think out loud and to solve problems

Why should professionals like you spend their time volunteering on STEM projects?

One thing, its always nice to give back to people especially if it involves something that you are good at. For me at least – I derive a lot from that — plus keeps me sharp

Do you believe you had an impact on the mentee?

When you are working in the real world, you are always going to be working with people and I guess this was good a test as any to work towards a common goal. So in terms of working together I absolutely thing it would have prepared them for a programming job. If we were to work on another project, I definitely see a lot of opportunity for the relationship to grow stronger. Mentorship is a huge part of youth development

How do you think these mentoring opportunities compare to the resources you had when you learned STEM Programming?

When I was in school, I had no mentorship whatsoever. We had to learn from Google. I would have cherished to have a mentorship if I could go back in time.

Finally, what’s next with Asha Hope Amanaki?

Well because of positive experience I had mentoring Jaden, I am going to mentor another student on yet another tool for a college graduate. The new project is more challenging and in a programming language that I have never used before. So I looking forward to working on it!

The post Learning STEM through programming first appeared on Asha Hope Amanaki.

Volunteer with Tech Skills for NonProfits

ashahopeamanaki — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 10:37:16 +0000

Peoples Place Things (PPT) is a nonprofit based our of Portland Oregon that works with Ciudad Mundo, an organization based in Bolivia, and the US Embassy in Bolivia to put on a program called AccessPlus. The program is a virtual program for young people in Bolivia to get cultural, work, and language experiences as well as coaching, and workshops to develop their professional and leadership capacities.

One of the volunteers from PPT with an experience in Web Developed helped Asha Hope Amanaki upgrade the website and enable features that inactive thus improving the experience of visitors on the website. We interviewed Josoe Ichuta, and tried to understand their journey through this partnership. Follow on to learn more about the experience.

Hi Josoe, Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Tell us a little about yourself to our readers?

I am an Electronic Engineer, currently working as a software developer in a government institution (Servicio de Impuestos Nacionales de Bolivia). I also belong to a telecommunications research amateur group.

Tell us more about AccessPlus and how it helps you with professional development?

The Access Plus volunteer program was oriented to discover our abilities to work as a team, to always give the best of ourselves and also it helps us to create a network with national and international organizations.

At Asha Hope Amanaki, what were your roles and responsibilities as a volunteer in the team?

My role during the internship was the facilitator, I was in charge of gathering all the ideas and advice of the team to perform the requirements of the organization. At the beginning we started to learn how to create and edit a WordPress website, so after that we updated some functionalities, adjusted and improved some styles of Asha Hope Amanaki’s website.

For students interested in participating with us, what would you say, you learnt from this opportunity?

I did learn how to face a problem from different points of view and combine ideas from all of the group to obtain a much better solution. I also learn a lot from the expertise and abilities of my team Daniela and Angela, they are great friends. Now I can say that we can create our own WordPress website to share our hobbies and knowledge on the internet.

Since this was a remote opportunity, what would you say were the biggest advantages and disadvantages?

Since all of us were from different Time Zones, including the team at Asha Hope Amanaki, sometimes it was difficult to coordinate our meetings. We had to find a means of communication that worked for all and we created a Whatsapp group to streamline communications.

As this was an opportunity with an organization based in the United States, it gave us an opportunity to communicate in English and practice our communications skills as we presented our findings and corresponding solutions. We were connected to people from different parts of the world and since we all had to work in a team, it provided great experience to work together as team.

Are there any final thoughts you would like to share with our audience?

This opportunity helped me to grow in my career and I’m sure it will help to find new opportunities outside of my country. Finally I want to thank Srilekhya, who was our mentor, for being with us during the internship and helping us to accomplish all the requirements of the organizations in a timely manner.

If you liked reading this, checkout the experience of another volunteer from PPT who volunteered as a Social Media Manager with Asha Hope Amanaki. To know more about other volunteer opportunities, check the volunteer section.

The post Volunteer with Tech Skills for NonProfits first appeared on Asha Hope Amanaki.

Jumpstart Your Events with GivePulse

DJ Zeverbergen — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Asha Hope Amanaki (AHA) is a small nonprofit startup that is dedicated to “serving the vulnerable and marginalized communities via education, socialization, health, medical and food access”. This often means that the communities being served are small, highly localized groups that may not have national attention or publicity. This can lead to a lack of public interest in helping and difficulty finding the right volunteers, especially when first starting out.

An important step in a non-profit’s journey to fulfilling its mission is to get people involved. Drawing in volunteers and ensuring that our organization has steady, motivated workers with a connection to our missions can be difficult. This is especially true of small and startup NPOs, who don’t have the funds or recognition to draw in large amounts of volunteers organically.

In AHA’s early days, our 501c3 status via the government hadn’t fully processed, being in a pending state for 8 months. While in that pending state, AHA still needed volunteers, but had a difficult time connecting with them. Ashwin came across GivePulse. GivePulse is a platform for small and local nonprofits to connect with volunteers and organize volunteer opportunities. They accepted AHA into the platform despite the pending 501c3 status. This helped connect AHA to a small but dedicated group of volunteers that have donated over 400 hours of work to the cause.

GivePulse helped AHA pull together a team of volunteers that helped assemble over 200 care kits for AHA’s Packing Winter Care Kits event! This kind of success in getting boots on the ground is essential for an impactful launch. AHA’s experience with the platform demonstrates that GivePulse has put together an enthusiastic network of individuals and teams that actually get out into the world and act. GivePulse gives small nonprofits the power to assemble motivated volunteers with a passion for doing good!

Not only did GivePulse accept AHA onto the platform, they even spent an hour on a call with Ashwin, enabling AHA to have their first virtual volunteer opportunity at GivePulse’s Virtual Volunteer Week. This smooth and friendly onboarding made a huge impact on AHA’s ability to get started with volunteers, and has continued to make a lasting impact on their ability to accomplish goals. It feels like you’re a part of an organization that really cares about your success when you’re listed on GivePulse, and the volunteers that use the platform are equally as caring.

With the momentum from GivePulse’s most recent event, we have received volunteers from local PNW universities PCC, PSU, Lewis and Clark, Washington State University, and Warner Pacific University. We’ve also had volunteers from across the US, including: UT Dallas, Normandale in St. Louis, University of Incarnate in Texas, Tulsa Community College, University of Arkansas, Minnesota State University, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Weber State University.

We hope to carry this incredible momentum and continue to partner with GivePulse for years to come!

The post Jumpstart Your Events with GivePulse first appeared on Asha Hope Amanaki.