Why Take Action? A Call to Service
What is your inspiration? For every community bystander turned community volunteer, there is a deeply personal, compelling answer to what has inspired him or her to stop hoping for change and start making change. For some, the inspiration for change is completely altruistic, idealistic. It stems from a moral obligation seeded in religious or family tradition. For others, the inspiration is an encounter, or a moment of realization or gratitude.
It is a deeply personal, private inspiration that drives a volunteer. It is a call to service, as described by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Coles. Coles, also a Harvard professor and Concord area child psychiatrist, writes in his book, The Call of Service, "The call of service has been heard by so many of us — but with different messages, at different pitches and frequencies, and with different outcomes."

Who Cares?
About half of the adult population — one out of every two adults — regularly volunteers about five hours each week. Volunteers are ordinary people with bills and commitments and fears. They are individuals, families, professional associations, student groups and neighborhoods effecting change in their communities. Our communities thrive, or fail, through the dedicated effort of local people who take the time, and the chance, to care.

How You Can Make a Difference
From a needs assessment facilitated by the Concord-Carlisle Community Chest (CCCC) in 1998, the most frequently stated areas of concern are services to teens, a stronger sense of neighborhood and community, substance abuse, domestic violence and transportation issues for all age groups. The Acton-Boxborough United Way (ABUW) is conducting an updated needs assessment during the spring of 2001. Currently, the CCCC and ABUW allocate financial support to agencies that provide services for seniors, families, teens, mental health, disabled persons, youth, domestic violence and hunger. These social issues, along with others like the environment and committee work with agencies such as ABUW and CCCC presently seek your help as volunteers in the Acton/Concord area.

What is the Acton/Concord Area?
While many of the service providers included in our database are within the Acton/Boxborough and Concord/Carlisle communities, we also hope to increase the domain of agencies to incorporate much of eastern Massachusetts Middlesex County.

How to Start
You don't have to move mountains or change the world in a day to make a difference. You can change someone's life simply by reading a book, going for a walk, or sharing other things you already love to do. You can answer telephones, provide legal counsel, or paint a kitchen. This site will help you match your unique interests, abilities, and availability with the service providers in the Acton/Concord area who make a difference in the lives of our neighbors.
Before you access the database, you need to determine generally what kinds of volunteer opportunities are best suited for you. The first step toward doing this is to ask yourself four important questions:

•	What social issues are most important to you? For example, are you more interested in homelessness or illiteracy? Domestic violence or drug abuse?
•	What skills do you want to offer? Do you want to do something for others that use your existing skills, or do you want to do something that develops a new skill?
•	How do you want to help? Do you want to work one-on-one with someone as a tutor, or do you want to contribute at a distance, like collecting clothing for a shelter? Do you want to help by yourself or as part of a group of people working together? How much time can you offer?
•	Who do you want to help —babies, children, teens, young parents, the elderly?

* Sections adapted from Simple Things You Can Do to Make A Difference in Greater Boston, by the United Way of Massachusetts Bay's Volunteer Action Center