Today’s guest post is written by Candice LaCroix who shares with us how volunteering has changed her life. She is currently retired, living in California and focuses on her art, which are Indian, Western, and Wildlife images.  She still volunteers time to time when the opportunities present themselves.

When I was chosen to be a recipient of the Daily Points of Light Volunteer Award in 1990, and traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with the other recipients from across our nation, it was a life-changing and most valuable experience for me.

From clothing drives and food drives, to working on finding resources to meet the needs of families who lost everything in a home fire, volunteering always played a major role in my life.  A lot of money was never available to me for what I wanted to accomplish, but I found that if there is a will, there is a way.  If I discovered a cause with ample merit to it, someone else would come through with the funds to help make it happen.  It is people working with people, and each one using his own knowledge, talents, and inspirations that gets things done…for the good of those in need.

Volunteering/working on the Board of Directors for the Make-A-Wish Foundation was the most valuable and rewarding experience for me.  It inspired me to develop a program that would benefit not only the terminally-ill children, but children with devastating illnesses, i.e., catastrophically-ill children.  I created and organized the Ticket Donor Program, a program that allows season-ticket holders to donate their seat(s) that they would not be using, to a catastrophically-ill child and his/her family for a night out, and away from the daily medical needs and heartaches associated with a gravely-ill child.  And, at the Daily Points of Light Volunteer Award Ceremonies of 1990, I shared the details of my Ticket Donor Program with the other volunteers in attendance, who in turn, took the information home with them.  Without an exact count of how many programs were begun as a result, today practically every sports stadium across the nation have this or similar programs in place for the families, who otherwise would never be able to afford tickets, to be able to attend professional sports functions and shows such as Disney on Ice, and the enjoyment of a good, wholesome family outing.

I would like to put a call out to all of my fellow volunteer peers across this nation to research your communities, put your thinking caps on, use your imaginations, and discover areas where a program like this might not be in place yet…and then…GO FOR IT…MAKE IT HAPPEN!

The thought that went into bringing all of the recipients of the Daily Points of Light Volunteer Award together was nothing less than brilliant. The most important part of the whole experience was the ingenious plan to gather together all of the award recipients from across the United States, and then ask each person to share the programs, ideas, and deeds that worked in each of their individual communities back home.  Discussions within the group led to improving programs, and establishing new programs and ideas that would meet the needs, and enhance the lives of the people.  Then, taking all of these marvelous ideas back home with us and setting them into action within our communities led to snowballing episodes that exploded into actions of volunteerism, which spread all across our entire Nation!

President and Mrs. George H. W. Bush, you are to be commended for this fantastic contribution to our United States of America.  Thank you for calling out to the nation of “points of light” and setting the pace and inspiring me, and thousands of others, to find our places for volunteerism in our world.  May God Bless you ten-fold over for the blessings you have been to others.

Respectfully Yours,

Candice A. LaCroix