Spotlight On: Volunteer Southern Maryland

If you live, work, or often visit St. Mary's, Charles, or Calvert Counties, do yourself a favor and get to know Volunteer Southern Maryland, the area's volunteer center. Since 2002, the center has connected over 250 nonprofit organizations to over 1,000 volunteers.

Located on the College of Southern Maryland campus, the center is affiliated with 1-800-VOLUNTEER.ORG and visitors can access the services for free at www.csmd.edu/vsmd. After nonprofits register as an organization on the site, they have the ability to post opportunities and events for volunteers. Potential volunteers can search these opportunities and then create a free account to directly connect with an organization.

One of the Center's main goals is to "participate in strategic initiatives that mobilize volunteers to meet local community needs." To meet this goal, the center is working with a consultant and local nonprofits to identify pressing community needs. Once needs are identified, a plan will be developed for the center to provide volunteer resources to address these issues. This assessment is made possible in part by the Volunteer Generation Fund.

Volunteer Southern Maryland connects with its community through a variety of other activities. Every other month, the center hosts brown bag lunches to focus on critical areas of need and provide for local networking opportunities. The center often holds book drives, DVD drives, and drop-in service opportunities such as writing letters to service members. They also partner with the College of Southern Maryland and its teen "Community Service Camp" by providing nonprofits in the 1-800-VOLUNTEER database service opportunities for the participants in the week-long camp.

The center is located at 8730 Mitchell Road, P.O. Box 910, La Plata, MD 20646. On campus, you can visit them in LR Building, Room 205.

Commissioner Corner: Cherie Krug

"I don't remember not being involved in volunteerism," says Cherie Krug, a member of the Governor's Commission on Service and Volunteerism. As a child growing up in rural Connecticut, she recalls taking part in local American Cancer Society fundraising activities and seeing her parents helping neighbors in need. She says the concept of helping others was instilled into her.

Now, as the Director of Major Gifts at Frostburg State University (FSU) she has the opportunity to support, through time and money, a variety of projects in her Western Maryland community. She currently supports the City of Cumberland's Parks and Recreation as "it's important to preserve our green spaces and offer family activities" in the area. She and her husband volunteer with Special Olympics and she is a member of the board for the United Way, which supports a broad base of agencies.

Krug was the first woman in her family to graduate college and she now supports the university's abilities to help to its students achieve. One of her proudest volunteer experiences was when she helped Tony Washington, a FSU alum, bring Relay for Life to their campus about 10 years ago. She is thankful to have met cancer survivors and "students who have raised so much support for research for cancer."

Before moving to Maryland, Krug lived in New York and volunteered weekly in a soup kitchen. Over time, she progressed through the ranks of a server to salad maker to meal preparer and finally to an assistant cook. Through this experience she had the opportunity to cook side by side with chefs from local restaurants and culinary schools. She was even offered a job by a local restaurant to cook based upon her efforts at the kitchen. Volunteering gave Krug the chance to try new things outside of her full-time career. "Think about this job market," Krug says. "Volunteering is an opportunity to use your skills and try out new ones that you may have never had the chance to explore."