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12:34 a.m. - 2002-11-16
Health and Community Service
I went to see both my doctors today. Just a check up with my GP. He's moved offices once now as he moves toward setting up his own clinic. My vitals all were very good, but he was so stressed that I was very concerned. I think that he's trying to carry way too much by himself. I reminded myself that even though I'm feeling very pressured where my worklife is concerned, I don't have people's lives hanging in the balance if I make a mistake. I think from his comments, that again he is being pressured to follow drug treatment protocols that are not in the best interest of his patients. He said a couple of times that he was pleased he was correct with his choices for me, but it was more like he was trying to convince himself rather than me.

On the train on the way to my appointments, there was a group of students from a special needs class travelling with a couple of teachers. Destination? The Harry Potter movie. I think a special treat for something they had done as a group. The group of six were probably chronologically in their mid-teens but their mental age seemed to be around the age of 8 to 10. It could be that they would have found it difficult to be taken to a busy matinee because of the distractibility too. I hope they enjoyed their day.

My chiropractor seemed a lot less stressed this visit. Calmer. This clinic has 4 doctors plus a podiatrist and several massage therapists, so it is always a busy place. He was telling me about the seminar he and his staff had attended over the weekend. He's been looking for an admin package that streamlines and harmonizes everyones' record keeping and accounting practices. Right now there is enough disparity that it makes it difficult for his support staff to accommodate everyone's demands on them.

I had made up and copied a spreadsheet on disk for him, covering the years he went to Guatemala, that should gather the statistics I'll need to make an application for funding for some of the work he wants to do in the communities he has served in his visits. With a lot of the grants there is a component where the contributions of the group are matched by the philanthropic organization dollar for dollar. Because most of my chiropractor's group are medical professionals, the value for their services should be quite high. Add in the travel and personal costs that are paid for out of their own pockets, the value of the donated goods, and it should add up to a sizeable amount of donations in kind. What my doctor wants to do is purchase some land and construct some viable housing in order to stabilize life for his patients. When I gave him the disk I just suggested he look it over. If he's comfortable filling it out great, or if he wants amendments or wants me to do the data entry that's fine too. I think this should be enough for them to get a good start. I also think it might be very encouraging for his group to see how much value their efforts are worth, even in just a monetary sense.

Quite often volunteers have no idea how valuable their work is, nor do they realize how much of their time is actually invested in their efforts. A Statistics Canada study in 1990 determined that nearly 30% of Canadians over 15 years of age did some volunteer work in organized groups. The average amount of time spent volunteering per person per years was 191 hours - collectively more than 1 billion hours per year. A value of $12 per hour was allocated by the Federal government to the volunteer time as the average wage that would have had to be paid to someone in the traditional workforce for the same effort. This equaled an annual contribution to the Canadian economy of $13.2 billion in 1990 dollars. In addition, donated out of pocket expenses were assessed at $925 million per annum. Donated volunteer time, as a cash equivalent, is worth 3 times the total of private financial charitable donations before that is written down for tax deductions/write-offs. There was no assessment for "in kind" donations such as medical supplies or building supplies. Anyway, you get the picture. I know I had to track everyone's hours when we were working on the public park raising nearly $1 million. Over the total time of that one project I ended up spending several thousand hours as a volunteer. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen the numbers accumulating every month. That translated into some nice matching funds that were used to buy playground equipment. That makes your work tangible and meaningful. Cumulatively, on all the projects I volunteered on at the same time, I know I was spending 40 to 60 hours a week, usually while my guys were at school. I took the younger ones with me as did the other Moms I worked with. That was our social life in a nutshell. It was a very rewarding way to live.

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