Are you seeking any volunteer or internships opportunities?

 At We Care Arts we are truly blessed to have strong relationships with local universities/colleges in the greater Dayton area. Several of those colleges are Sinclair Community College, University of Dayton, Wright State University, University of Findlay and Kettering College. Some of the volunteers come anywhere from 10 hours to 25 hours each semester or come in for a one day observation. After the one day observations students attending typically

complete a project with their university/college to reflect on their experience. In addition to volunteers we typically get work study students from the University of Dayton. The volunteers and work study students work one on one with our clients. The volunteers have a wide variety of majors ranging from psychology to business and medical majors. Two students from UD will be participating in a semester of service this summer. On average we have about 1-5 interns every semester. This coming fall we will have students from UD’s sociology department and two students from Sinclair’s mental health department joining us.

Our clients benefit greatly from the volunteers. Some of the volunteers and clients are the same age. This allows the volunteers to understand the clients’ lifestyle and gives the clients a peer to socialize with. Having the students come gives us an extra set of eyes and ears which, is also beneficial to our clients in many ways. The students may notice something that the staff does not.The volunteers do a variety of tasks aside from working with the clients.We are also truly thankful to have volunteers to do tasks that the staff doesn’t always have time to do.

One student that volunteered in the past was studying to become an art teacher. She wrote an article on how she originally thought she would teach our clients about life but also found that the clients taught her about life. A lot of the volunteers have never been exposed to individuals with disabilities before.

We also had another previous volunteer who spent a summer with us. She was originally in medical school but after her time at We Care Arts decided changed her major to medical research. She didn’t want to work with clients and have to give them bad news. We are more than proud to hear that she opened a lab and helped invent a drug with her professor at Berkeley University. The drug is an alternative medicine for chemotherapy. We love having volunteers because we believe it is important for the local schools to be involved in their community.

If you or anyone you know are looking for volunteer opportunities or work study experience We Care Arts is an excellent place to do so. Click here to learn more about our programs http://www.wecarearts.org/ and if you have any question or want more information please call us at (937)252-3937.