A proposed series of workshops to encourage service within Oxford and inform participants of how they can best serve their community may be postponed due to low registration.
Gene Willeke, organizer of the workshops, originally slated the series for Feb. 10 through March 3 at the Oxford Senior Citizens Center.
"The workshops may be pushed back as late as the fall," Willeke said.
The series of four workshops are designed to acquaint volunteers with needs that already exist in the Oxford community and familiarize them with how to best serve those needs. Among other things, the classes will coach volunteers on how to manage bureaucratic institutions like medical insurance companies when volunteering.
According to Monica Ways, director of the Office of Community Engagement and Service at Miami University, the organizers are looking for a core of volunteers who will be able to consistently aid in several areas.
Ways and Willeke both emphasized the need for the citizens of Oxford to get involved in helping one another. The search for volunteers is focused on people who live or work in Oxford, including recent retirees and the faculty and staff of Miami.
"The university is not the major focus of volunteers - we are part of a larger Oxford community," Ways said.
According to Willeke, the workshops are part of a continuing community legacy.
The funds to hold the volunteer education will come from a fund in memory and honor of Gene Willeke's late wife, Carol Willeke, who died in July 2005 from breast cancer and was an emeritus director of research at Miami.
"(She was) very much responsible for human subjects review of proposal and of training researchers in the ethical dimensions of research on human subjects," Willeke said. "She was deeply committed to the concept of community, and wanted to do things that fostered a sense of community in Oxford and the Miami University."If the classes do not begin as planned in
February and March, more information will be added to the city of Oxford Web site.
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There is no cost for attending the programs. Though the workshops will be new to Oxford, they have a track record of being suc cessful in other cities; including Urbana, Ill. and Nashville, Tenn.
The workshops have the support of many charitable and nonprofit organizations in the area including the United Way of Oxford, Oxford Senior Citizens Center, Family Resource Center, Community Counseling and Crisis Center, McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital, Oxford Community Foundation and Miami's Office of Community Engagement and Service.
These organizations will be present at the workshops to help the volunteers decide how and where their efforts would be best served.
For more information on the volunteer workshops contact Gene Willeke at (513) 523-3321 or e-mail at willekge@muohio.edu.
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