We've gone to a volunteer only night, for those looking to do strictly chores- not that our system runs perfectly smoothly, but it helps to have dedicated attention on some shop tasks.
-Sorting parts is always a great one, and a learning experience too. -Have rulers?Put em to use! Sort bottom brackets by size! Ah! -if you've got a parts washer, and a bucket of chains (or a bucket of chains and some simple green... you can resurrect some awfully nasty stuff- have em wear gloves! -signage is always needed, it seems, at our shop, and I'm really bad at getting people to donate their artistic abilities to those tasks... but they're valuable. -de-spoking wheels or lubing up spoke nipples for usable wheels is a sit quietly and work task. -Cleaning -prepping bikes for recycling (stripping stuff on down) is totally useful and credit worthy for us.
But, as importantly, you sometimes have to just say "Sorry, we've got nothing right now. Come back on Volunteer night, stay after, help us clean this dump up."
That's what we say, anyway. And we love our volunteers and our dump.
Peace Pete.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 2:15 PM, Rich Points rich@richpoints.com wrote:
How many times do we hear this question every day? Our Earn-A-Bike program consists of 10 hours of community service doing chores around the shop. We've had record numbers of EABers this spring and our list of chores is burned through in the first couple hours of any given day. So for the rest of the time the shop facilitators make up chores on the fly. This is particularly hard when the 20 people in the shop are asking two or three facilitators a constant stream of questions. Maybe we have too many people in the shop but I think if we had a better way to keep people working on projects.
How are you keeping people busy in your shop?
Peace
-- Rich Points Community Cycles Director http://CommunityCycles.org Rich@CommunityCycles.org 720-565-6019
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