Raegan Payne, a Los Angeles area writer and actor, is in a race to complete fifty different volunteer activities by 2010. She’s journaling about each experience on her blog www.thegoodmuse.com in the hope that people will read the journal entries and find an organization that they would like to help.
Raegan was inspired to start the website after a friend turned down her invitation to volunteer at a soup kitchen.
“They turned down my [soup kitchen] invite because they thought it would take too much time and would be … uncomfortable. They had no idea what the experience would be like. I thought maybe other people don’t volunteer because they don’t know what to expect—because they are scared. I’m trying to take the fear out of the experience.”
Ms. Payne has already completed twenty-four different volunteer activities with charities ranging from Heal the Bay to The Miracle Project. She also looks for new and unusual volunteer experiences, which has led her to unique groups like Swap-O-Rama-Rama and Librivox.
“Anyone can find and activity that fits there talents and lifestyle or they might even learn something new. I’ve learned how to correctly plant a tree, nurse a kitten back to health, teach a group of children to write, test water quality, use a power saw, and so much more. I’m pretty handy to have around now.”
Raegan’s journal entries are humorous and poignant, like her March 2nd blog entitled My Volunteer Journal: Episode 11 – A Second Grade Literary Scholar at the Love and Literacy Event.
While TheGoodMuse isn’t receiving the same volume of traffic as PerezHilton, Ms. Payne says she is happy to do her part and hopes to motivate others. “In this economy not everyone can give regularly to a charity, but everyone can give their time.”
The non-profits are also happy to get the word out about what they do. Heal the Bay recently wrote Raegan to ask if they could use one of her journal entrees in their quarterly newsletter and people from across the country are writing Raegan to ask what kind of activity she would recommend for them.
“I’m flattered that they want my advice. Some people think they are really limited by their finances or life situation, but I can always find something for them to do. I guess it’s easier to type a human being who’s done a lot of stuff rather than search blindly on the Internet for hours.”
Ms. Payne might just have a future as a volunteer matchmaker.
