The Harvest VISTA worked alongside the Senior Program and Education Manager  to create a schedule of monthly work parties that will take place at any of the 14 parks City Fruit stewards.

Depending on the season, tasks can range from digging tree circles and mulching them to prevent weeds, to a harvest celebration and apple-pressing event.

The VISTA determines the site needs and will then recruit a number of volunteers using various outreach mechanisms.

Such volunteer recruitment methods for orchard steward work parties include: Volunteer Match, Seattle Works, Idealist, Microsoft’s Volunteer Manager, organizations, businesses, and schools that have expressed an interest in group volunteer opportunities or corporate volunteer events, City Fruit social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), City Fruit newsletters, and City Fruit Volunteer Newsletters.

As always, timing and planning is of the essence!

Remember that aside from planning, there will also be a couple hours of work to set up the information in volunteers for Salesforce so that volunteers can recruit online.

United Way King County has connected us with volunteer groups in the past as well as larger corporations that focus on corporate volunteer events as part of their workplace values such as Microsoft or Expedia.