Volunteer Day at James Madison Park

The Volunteer Day at James Madison Park was challenging because I had to lead it with the help of two other interns. The usual CLA staff was busy organizing a big event and submitting a grant application. It was a small group of volunteers and most of them were retired. The task assigned was physically demanding because we had to pull green algae out from the water nearby the beach and bring it to a dumpster. I learnt this day that it is important to take into account the limits of a group. We had to adapt our plan and set some break time in order to keep the group motivated. During these down times, I tried to use all of my communication skills acquired from the past year. For example, I tried to emphasize the impact of their action by explaining that we are not just cleaning up a beach, but we are raising awareness. Many people in the park came to us to ask questions about the level of the lake, invasive species, and algae. This was a great opportunity to improve my skills at explaining complex environmental problems spontaneously. I think that my explanation about zebra mussels had a great impact because I was able to find some of them in the green algae. People are more likely to care about an issue if they see it and experience it.

Loop the Lake

I participated in the fundraising event called Loop the Lake where people register to loop lake Monona by bike. CLA organized stands around the lake to provide t-shirts, food, drink, and ice cream. I was the lead volunteer for the stop at Olin park and was responsible for taking care of four volunteers and distributing popsicles. I also helped to pick up the food donated by Woodman’s and bring back the unused items for credit exchange. The difficulties that I encountered at Olin park were that the popsicles were not frozen and the family that was supposed to volunteer with me canceled at the last minute. It was alright because instead of the family, Paula was assigned to my station! Everything went smoothly we even had some time to relax before the first bikers arrived.

Bringing back the food to Woodman’s was also challenging because nobody knew that we were supposed to bring back the receipt and Woodman’s staff was confused about the exchange for credit. Participating in this event was constructive for my project because I got to face situations that required me to use my solving problem skills. It was nice to have more responsibilities and feel useful. Also, I was able to observe all of the meetings related to this event. It gave me an overview of what it takes to organize a large-scale event for a non-profit organization. Furthermore, the take away meeting was constructive because we listed things that we thought went particularly well, things that can be improved, and tools/materials that we should add to the check list next year. My European mind set bias would have led me to think only about things that need to be improved. But now I realize that it is important to take the time to talk about positive things in order to encourage the staff to continue doing it. This reminds me of our reflection on how to give constructive feedback. Affirming feedback is as important as adjusting feedback.

Updating the Volunteer Day survey

One of my deliverables is to update the Volunteer Day survey. I did extensive research about measuring volunteer satisfaction and what makes a volunteer continue volunteering. I found that five criteria were important to measure:

• Participation efficiency = the degree of satisfaction for helping someone other than themselves (feeling of importance, role in the organization’s success)
• Communication quality = volunteer’s experiences about the management and the training from CLA and host site partners
• Work assignment = the degree of satisfaction about learning opportunities, developing abilities and skills, and tackling challenging tasks
• Organizational support = educational and emotional resources to perform their volunteer assignment
• Group integration = relationship with other volunteers and paid staff

The existing survey was already pretty good because it was short, clear, with a mix of opened and closed questions, and with a space for open comments at the end. However, some important aspects of volunteer satisfaction were not present such as measuring the feeling of importance, the quality of communication, and the efficiency of the educational component. Other criteria were not applicable in the context of the program because the volunteer days are only for companies or organizations that are donating money to CLA, not for the general public. For example, group integration is non applicable because the volunteers already know each other before coming. This activity might strengthen their team spirit but knowing this information would not be really helpful for suggesting actions to improve the volunteer day next summer.

Also, I decided to take off a question that was asking if the balance between education and hands-on work was satisfying. When I looked at the results from last year most people were satisfied and almost the same number of people wanted more education or more hands-on work. After a lot of hesitation, I concluded that the results from this question did not help to improve the volunteer day. I thought it would be more useful to get information about the educational component of the volunteer day and what exactly the volunteers want to learn. Do they want to know more about plant identification, lake ecology, information about CLA, or sites information? I think the right amount of hands-on experience can greatly vary from one volunteer to another depending on their physical condition and background. I think we should just remind volunteers during the introduction time that they are welcome to take breaks whenever they feel they need it.

I hope that the new questions in the updated survey will help CLA to determine the course of actions next summer and I greatly encourage them to think critically about the results and continue to tweak questions if needed. Overall, I think that I am satisfied of my work because the new survey measures more criteria to better evaluate volunteers’ satisfaction.

Organizing a focus group to evaluate the Citizen Monitoring program

I wanted to evaluate the impact of my work on the Citizen Monitoring program. The idea was to create a survey and send it to the volunteers. However, during the progress meeting we decided that it would not be representative because all the monitors are returning volunteers. Instead, we would set up a meeting with a small focus group of monitors and discuss the difficulties and malfunctions of the LakeForecast website as well as evaluate the effectiveness of my new updated monitoring manuals. The new manuals are shorter with information that is relevant for the tasks assigned because I separated nearshore and offshore manuals. Offshore monitoring is actually part of the Citizen Lakes Monitoring Network (CLMN) program which is directed by the DNR. CLA is just an intermediary. Concerning nearshore monitoring, this is a CLA initiative where the data collected is used to inform the public about beach conditions in real time on the LakeForecast website. The group focus meeting will mostly concern nearshore monitors and take place in August. Unfortunately, I don’t know yet if I will be able to participate to this meeting, but I will help to create the agenda.

In this context, it is difficult to evaluate my real impact on the program, but I can already tell that I brought positive changes. For example, I gave the offshore monitors the option to submit their data directly on the DNR website. By giving this option to the offshore monitors, CLA staff does not have to submit the data for them anymore which is a great gain of time. To implement this change, I helped monitors to set up their own account. Then, I created instructions in their offshore manual with screen shots to show how to use the DNR website step by step. It was a rewarding experience to help both CLA staff and the offshore monitors to gain precious time.

Evaluation of my personal leadership skills

I mentioned the idea of evaluating my personal leadership skills during my progress meeting with my host supervisor. This exercise has two purposes: make sure that this internship really helped me to develop my leadership skills and find a course of actions to work on the skills that need to be improved before the internship is over. We decided to proceed by letting me create a list of skills and self-evaluate them in a rubric. Then, I would discuss it with Issis.

The result from this meeting indicated that:

• Four skills were not applicable in the context of this internship (confidence using a phone, ability to delegate, charisma, and diplomacy)
• Four course of actions (set a meeting with the director to improve my understanding of non-profit organization, continue working on my confidence to work in English, be aware of the time during the next progress meeting to improve my facilitation skills, and create a checklist for correcting my most common grammar mistakes)
• Two skills were underrated (ability to take initiative and ability to listen)
• One skill needed to be added (willingness to help)

The results are summarized in a table and rated for Excellent (4), Good (3), Fair (2), and Need improvement (1). The overall estimation of my leadership skills is calculated with a percentage. This exercise will be repeated at the end of the placement to measure my improvement and the results will be displayed in a graph.