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Volunteer Florida launches "Better Communities Include Everyone" Initiative

(April 1, 2008)

The Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism and Community service (Volunteer Florida) is searching for your best practices on engaging people with disabilities in volunteerism! Please help by sharing your examples, and you might win a statewide award! The “Better Communities Include Everyone” questionnaire seeks to identify effective practices for including persons with disabilities in volunteer service. We hope that you will share your effective practices with the national and volunteer service field in these five broad areas:

• Outreach and targeted recruitment of persons with disabilities
• Effective examples of providing reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities
• Innovative engagement strategies that enhance the volunteer experience for persons with disabilities
• The benefits of engaging persons with disabilities in volunteer opportunities (from the perspective of both the agency and the volunteer).
• Volunteer success stories.

The "Better Communities Include Everyone" initiative will recognize organizations that are doing an excellent job at reaching out to and including volunteers with disabilities.

Organizations with submissions judged by Volunteer Florida as exemplary will receive a plaque for their achievement and be recognized at a statewide Volunteer Florida event. Agencies whose contributions are included in the best practices compendium will receive a certificate of achievement recognizing their contribution to making their community a better place by including persons with disabilities as volunteers.

Click here to complete the “Better Communities Include Everyone” questionnaire. If you have additional questions, please contact Volunteer Florida staff members, Paul Martell, Accessibility Program Manager at paul@volunteerflorida.org or Erin Pantoja at erin@volunteerflorida.org.