Serving Others as a Way of Life
Many people do a stint for a good cause now and then, but for Kate Abbott, an employee of the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Family Support Program, volunteering is a way of life.
It started when, as a teen, she read There Are No Children Here, a book recounting the story of two boys growing up in a violence-ridden Chicago housing project. The book described a family and community dynamic she'd never imagined from her safe, supportive middle-class home in New Jersey. It kindled her interest in reaching out in the community.
At first, she volunteered once a week as a peer tutor through one of the churches in her town, working one-on-one with youngsters. For her next volunteer experience, she stepped outside her hometown.
"Through a different church in town, we would do food runs (in a program) called 'Bridges' ‚ we'd go to a couple of different bridges in New York City with a huge van ... and feed the homeless, give them clothes and blankets and shoes and whatever. I talked with a few people and found out that being homeless didn't mean that you were a drug addict or were worthless. It meant that you may have just gotten evicted last weekend and were working a regular day job, but didn't have a place to live. That was really eye-opening."
Abbott said those teen volunteer projects fed something inside her, and while she can't relate directly her volunteer history to her college studies, volunteering did help develop her interest in working with families and children. As an undergraduate at Duke, she majored in social psychology and found opportunities to both learn and give as a volunteer in a variety of programs: making dinners for the parents of hospitalized children through one church program, volunteering in various capacities at Duke Hospital, working with Durham schools.
In her senior year, she got her first taste of volunteer management. Through a connection with Duke's Office of Community Affairs and a recommendation from a school official with whom she'd volunteered, she landed a part-time job helping organize the volunteer program at local elementary schools. Her semester's work proved valuable.
"I love Kate Abbott," said Toni Hill, principal of Forest View Elementary, who met Abbott through a class-related volunteer project and then proposed that Abbott come back in another capacity, as part of the Duke-Durham schools partnership. "She was fabulous. Kate had an unusually mature understanding of how organizations work and how to plug into organizations. She offered some structure (to the school's volunteer program) that didn't exist before."
Abbott met with teachers and others at Forest View to find out what duties its ample volunteer base performed and help the school figure out how best to use its volunteers. Among other things, she set up a computer tracking and scheduling system, hoping that when the next support person came in, there would be no need to reinvent an organizing system.
After graduation in May 1998, Abbott took a research job at the Durham VA Medical Center. Previously, her work and volunteer efforts centered on children, but at the VA she worked with the other end of the family spectrum, with elderly people. She interviewed patients before and after primary care visits and worked on databases for a study on the quality of life while dying and measuring the attributes of a "good death."
In the meantime, she returned to Duke Hospital as a volunteer. "I missed working with kids," she said, and signed up for training to be a "Best Buddy" for children undergoing bone marrow transplant. After 18 hours of training, buddies are matched with patients to provide support as a friend for the duration of the child's stay in Durham. Patients average 30 to 50 days in a special critical-care-level isolation unit before their bodies recover sufficient immunity to allow them to move to outpatient status. Even then, they must remain in the Durham area for treatment and monitoring for at least 100 days post-transplant, and often must stay near the hospital for even longer.
Best Buddies is demanding work, and her maturity and skills made her a standout volunteer, said Jane Schroeder, who directs the family support program, including Best Buddies. After one "match from heaven," Abbott encountered some difficulties with another, less rewarding match, struggling with a situation where a close relationship never grew.
"She thought she wasn't needed," Schroeder said, and added that some volunteers can't find a balance between their need to give and the families' needs. "But she came and talked about it, and then demonstrated an ability to be clear about whose needs she was serving. ... I thought, 'Here's a person who really gets what it is to serve another person.'"
When Schroeder received funding for a 30-hour position to assist with the volunteer program, Abbott went for it, cutting back to 10 hours a week in her VA job. She shifted from volunteer to paid staff with Best Buddies in August, and now interviews prospective volunteers, helps train and match them with patients and families and tracks volunteer visits and experiences.
"I'm involved with so many more families, though in a different way than I was as a volunteer," Abbott said. Her coordination duties curtail developing the individual closeness she had as a Best Buddy, but she finds satisfaction in the updates she gets from the volunteers she supervises. "The fun stories I read and hear are the bright moments in my morning. I'm a little more removed, but my job isn't to provide respite any more; it's to coordinate those who do."
Though she's immersed in the volunteer world in her job, she says it's about time to rejoin the unpaid volunteer ranks.
"The concept of family has sort of been my philosophy the past few years," the 23-year-old said. "I've seen the need for support and difference just one support person can make. ... There's a rest home up the street from my house and I've been thinking about going in and asking, 'Who doesn't get visited?'"
Written by Karen Hines.