Changing Lives
| Publication year | 2011 |
| Pages | 10 |
| Citation | Vol. 80 No. 4 Pg. 10 |
Changing Lives
By Anne McDonald, Kansas Lawyers Assistance Program, Topeka, executive director, mcdonalda@kscourts.org
"During National Volunteer Week, we honor the ordinary people who give of themselves to accomplish extraordinary things, and we encourage more Americans to strengthen our country by volunteering."
— Presidential Proclamation, April 16, 2010
Many organizations devote the entire month of April to honoring and celebrating their volunteers. We here at the Kansas Lawyers Assistance Program (KALAP) will do no less. All those laudatory descriptions leap to mind: foundation, life blood, sine qua non, invaluable, priceless, useful, important. Kind of reminds me of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" from "Sonnets from the Portuguese, XLIII."
How do we appreciate you, describe you, praise you, thank you? Let us count the ways. Well, with words like these but — we know, because you've told us: the best thanks and compensation is the joy the volunteer gets from giving.
KALAP volunteers give their time, their knowledge and experience, their support, their caring, and concern to other Kansas lawyers. They serve as life coaches, mentors, and monitors. Most volunteers agree to work one on one with another lawyer who's going through a rough patch so to speak and they do this through regular, periodic meetings, and contacts for as long as is needed — usually three to six months. Initially, most KALAP volunteers were recovering alcoholics and we still have many of those and we still need all of them. But as more lawyers struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, or aging, there's a need for other kinds of volunteers. People with some wisdom and a lot of patience.
KALAP does offer training, resources, and support to volunteers. However, what's often needed most is kindness and compassion, which is a side of us we may not get to show all that often.
Kansas Supreme Court Rule 206 addresses volunteers in several sections:
(f) KALAP shall provide the following services:
(1) Immediate and continuing assistance at no cost to lawyers.
(g) Confidentiality.
(1) All records and information maintained by KALAP, its Board, employees, agents, designees, volunteers, or reporting parties, shall be confidential and privileged ...
(2) ... volunteers, or reporting parties are relieved from the provisions...
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