Humor

An international Youth Forum was held just prior to the IAVE World Volunteer Conference in January 2001 in Amsterdam. By all accounts this was an extraordinary experience for the participants. Representatives of the Youth Forum were invited to report back to the full conference at one of the plenary sessions. They charged onto the stage with enthusiasm, sharing the theme of their meetings: "Volunteering IS sexy!" These young people urged everyone to change the old-fashioned images of volunteering.

Conferees were given a handout with eight graphics designed by the young people during a team exercise at their Forum. Each gives a different interpretation of "SEXY" as an acronym. e-Volunteerism is pleased to reproduce these with permission from the Amsterdam conference committee, representing the International Association for Volunteer Effort.

Here is a medley of three song parodies to popular Beatles songs that you can use for volunteer recognition. Although the songs are written to follow in sequence you might want to use them individually. You can be as simple or as elaborate with your presentation as time, budget and talent allow. A whole theme could be built around "The Sixties" if you really want to get into it. A quartet of "mop tops" could sing this although I think a whole chorus wearing Beatles wigs would be great. You might want some accompaniment since Beatles songs are a bit harder to sing than they look. Feel free to make these your own by altering words to suit your particular volunteers. Whatever you do, have fun!

Our previous issues have dealt with serious topics related to volunteerism, demonstrating the capacity of the Web to produce amazing amounts of useful material to assist managers of volunteer programs.

Of course, that's only one side of the Web. The other, more entertaining, side is discovered when you recognize that no matter how strange something is, you can find it somewhere on the Web. No matter how small, or how odd, or how unique, it's out there.

So here are some of our subjective favorites -- both the weird and the wonderful.