School to Career - Riverhead Foundation - Volunteer


		Volunteer Kit
		Contamination

When you volunteer, you do a job, not for money, but because you want to help people, animals, learn new skills and possibly help change the world around you. Volunteers like Jeanne Brown, at the Riverhead Foundation, do a lot of different jobs to help sea mammals such as seals and sea turtles.

Jeanne Brown is a volunteer on the seal team for the Riverhead Foundation. She gets a good feeling knowing she is saving the lives of seals by helping rescue them when they are injured or sick. Each day she prepares fish for feeding, cleans dishes and prepares equipment for rescues. Like everyone in the small volunteer facility, including the staffers, Jeanne chips in and does whatever work is necessary to help the foundation and the animals.

Jeanne reminds people who want to volunteer because they like "cute animals" that working with animals is a hard job. "There is a lot of physical work and there are long hours" she says. "However the rewards, such as releasing an animal that has been nursed back to health, are great."

Although Jeanne's college degree and career background were not in this field, or in any similar fields, she decided that helping these seals was something she wanted to do. She had worked in an office for 15 years and wanted to do something completely different. She thought helping rescue seals would be a good opportunity, because she not only loved animals, but was also good at thinking on her feet and acting in emergency situations, skills which are needed when rescuing a sick or injured animal.

If you love animals and want to help them, while making friends with others who share your interest, then you might want to become a volunteer for a foundation such as Riverhead. You'll need to listen to directions, learn new tasks and be ready to do whatever is needed. It can be exciting, fun, and also tiring work.