Sarah began to feel at home with us she began to bring baked treats to share with us all.

She was also willing to help out in other areas when we needed extra hands. For example, she staffed the office several times when we needed volunteer relief. We also discovered that she was an expert at doing large mailouts and she taught us her highly efficient method. She also appreciated the additional in-service training we provided and she came to several sessions on math and spelling.

Sarah is still with us and has willingly accommodated a change in her student's work schedule so that they now meet in the evening instead of during the day. The remarkable thing about Sarah's case is that it didn't take a remarkable amount of effort to make her feel valued, appreciated and supported in her work. We simply followed the basic principles of volunteer management and she seems to have found the positive volunteer experience she was looking for.

Dora Doubles Her Duties

Dora has been with our program for about six months. She enjoyed the tutor training and made friends with several other tutors from that training session and they now get together regularly. With the support of the staff, she also organized a potluck get-together with her training group several weeks after training ended.

Like many new tutors she was at first a little apprehensive about her ability to tutor and needed lots of encouragement. She asked to work with a lower level student and we felt that she would be an excellent tutor at this level. We matched her with Chris and they met on weekday mornings at the centre. They quickly hit it off and worked well together. Dora is an empathetic tutor and a natural teacher; she and Chris worked well together for four months and they enjoyed coming to our learning centre. But then Chris' work schedule changed and she needed to go on hold for a while.

By now, Dora had developed confidence in her abilities and was quite willing to be matched with a second student until Chris was able to return. We offered her a real challenge in Cheryl, a student who has major personal problems including substance