Get Involved in Your Community

There wasn't an actual conversation for the second segment of today's show. A last minute guest cancellation gave me an opportunity to step onto my "soapbox" and spend a few minutes talking about the importance of being involved in your community. The transcript is below. If you have questions, need resources or access to information, feel free to email me or send a text to 540-635-4121 and I'm happy to point you in the right direction. I'd also LOVE to hear how you are involved in your community! Send me your stories - maybe I'll feature YOU on a future show! Trancript: Welcome back to the Valley today. I am your host, Janet Michael, and you are stuck with me for just a couple of minutes as we finish out the show today. And I wanna talk about something that is important to me, and I hope that it's important to most of you listening, and that is community community means different things to different people. It looks very different for each of us, depending on how we were raised, what careers we've chosen, even the neighborhoods that we live in. I wasn't necessarily raised with a sense of community. I mean, I grew up in a blue collar family. My dad, to this day, it's. 70 plus years old still pours and finishes concrete. He still does side jobs. My mom worked at the local corner store. We had tons more of those back in the 1980s. my uncles all built houses. My aunt was a teacher. Volunteering, being part of civic organizations. That really wasn't something that I saw or I had experience with growing up. And I say that only to point out the fact that you don't have to have been raised in a certain way in order to embrace and give back to your community in any number of other ways. I struck out on my own and my career, Took all kinds of different, little side turns and When I got started in radio, ironically enough, and it was sales, certainly not on air. Never in a million years had you told me back in 1998 that I would be on the radio. I would've laughed at you and told you you had lost your mind. But one of my first radio bosses encouraged me to be active in the Winchester Chamber, and that's how long ago it's been, because that's actually what it was called. It was the Winchester Chamber. It was long before it was top of Virginia Regional Chamber, and they bought me, Yogi bought me my first red jacket in order to become an ambassador for the Winchester Chamber at the time. Shortly thereafter, I joined Kiwanis, and then I really began to learn and understand the powerful thing that being involved in your community can be. The Ambassadors Club was great because it put me in front of a ton of different small businesses. It allowed me to find out how their businesses worked. What kinds of things did they need? How could I facilitate introducing them to people or helping them to spread the word about their business, about their products, about their services, and be able to help them in some way? Kiwanis and then later when I joined Rotary, were fantastic because they put me on the front lines of a lot of the nonprofits in our area that are doing so much good, but need so much help. And that help doesn't always come in the form of writing a check. I know I joke a lot on the air. It's not really a joke 'cause I actually mean it, but I talk a lot about writing checks to nonprofits that have commas in them because those are the best checks that they like to receive. But not everything has to necessarily come with an actual dollar sign attached to it. You can volunteer for these nonprofits. You can find a nonprofit that you believe in and call them. Ask them, how can I support you? I don't have a lot of money. I have very little time, but the chances are there is going to be something that one of those nonprofits need that you have a skillset and are able to provide to them. It may be something as simple as we'd really like to get more Engagement and more interaction on our social media. So if you could pay closer attention to the social media posts that we make on our Facebook or make on our Instagram and share those on your Facebook page, that helps them to spread the word and it gets that message out to a much larger audience that they wouldn't normally have had access to. But being involved in these civic groups and then taking this job as host of the Valley today, I have had, let's see, as of today, I have had 1,935 conversations with people, and those conversations range from small businesses to local governments, to elected officials. I've talked to a slew of nonprofits, I've talked about events. It just brings home to me how important it is for each and every one of us to be involved in some way in our community. I. We hear so much these days about being what's deemed a bedroom community where people live in a particular area and they get up in the morning and they drive into Northern Virginia. They drive into DC where they work that typically, that's where they do their grocery shopping. That's where they do their entertaining. They get in the car at the end of the work. Day, and then they drive home and they go to bed, or they spend time with their family and they're not really engaged in the community in which they actually live. So I really wanna take a couple of minutes today and just encourage you wander outside of your driveway or your backyard and think about things that are important to you. Think about things that you are passionate about, and if that is going to local events, then do a little research. Do a little digging, call your local chambers of commerce. You do not have to be a member to call a Chamber of Commerce and say, Hey, can you give me an idea of some events that are happening in the area? And then go and attend those events. Go to the United Way website and look and see what volunteer opportunities are available there. Find out whether or not there's something that you offer that, a skillset that you have that you would be willing to donate an hour or two of your time. You can be trained and be a listener at Concern Hotline. There are so many things that we can all do in our community that sometimes we forget or we think we are not eligible for, or we overestimate actually the amount of time that it might take to be able to make a difference. So we just don't do it at all, and I really, really, really would like to encourage everyone who's listening today to take five minutes. It's Friday afternoon. Take five minutes, do a Google search for nonprofits in my area. If you are passionate about blood drives, do a Google search for blood drives. Find out where can you go give blood. How can you volunteer for the American Red Cross? If homeless is something that you really have a passion for and you would like to see some sort of positive change, come to the homeless community in whatever your community is. Then reach out to any of the homeless shelters, to any of the nonprofits that are serving that community and say, what can I do to help? How can I be of service to you? As soon as you start becoming a service to your community? what you're gonna find, I guarantee you what you're gonna find is that your community becomes a much better place for you to live. And all of the nonsense that you see and hear on the national news is gonna fade into the background. All of the criticisms and the complaints and the pettiness that you find in those Facebook groups for all of the different communities, you're gonna find that you're even going to those less and less. Because you're getting something more out of your community and it's all based on what you're putting into your community. If you're not sure where to start, ask me. Send me an email, Janet, at the river nine five three.com. You can send a text message to the radio station 6 3 5 4 1 2 1, and say, Hey, I don't know where to start. I don't know who to contact about this particular thing or that particular thing. I have contacts I have. People in Winchester, in Frederick County, in Clark County, in Shenandoah County, in Page County, LaRay in front Royal in Warren County. I will connect you, but the key is you've gotta make that first step. So please take some time today as you're going into the weekend and think, what can I do to today to be more engaged in my community? What can I do today to make somebody else's life a little bit better that lives in my community or even a neighboring community? If you live in. Winchester Frederick County like I do, but you work in Strassburg or you work in Woodstock and that's the community that you wanna support, that's okay too because supporting a local community is so much better than not supporting any community at all. So, I'm gonna climb down off my soapbox. I'm getting a little bit of a nosebleed from being up here so high. Thank you all for listening to me go on a bit of a rant. I really hope that something I've said has resonated with you, and if you do make a change or reach out to a nonprofit or decide to attend a local community event, I wanna know about it. Send me an email, send me a text and say, Hey Janet. I went to this event and it was great, and I met these great people. I went over to the library and just checked out a few books and wandered around. I took a class. Any of those things, I really, really wanna hear about it because that is what makes me keep going day to day. It's what makes me keep wanting to do this radio show because I feel like I'm trying to bring you opportunities. When you tell me that you're taking advantage of them, it is the best feeling for me in the world. So go have a great weekend. I'll meet you back here on Monday with, as a matter of fact, a nonprofit Dakota's Dream. Randy Woodward is gonna join me along with Alicia from Dakota's Dream. We're gonna talk about the fundraiser that Randy is, Currently embroiled in the middle of, he's gonna race in his first half marathon. He's raising money for one of the cats, Liam, that is currently housed at Dakota's Dream. And Alicia's gonna tell us Liam's story and a little bit about how we can help her, help him. So meet me back here for that just a few minutes. Afternoon, and thank you for listening today.