Creating a more diverse volunteer workshop

Hello to everyone,

I'm a volunteer at a community bike-shop and we're attempting to change the 'over fifty white male' syndrome in our volunteer shop.

My questions are “Has your shop experienced this syndrome and what has your shop done to bring about a change with this situation?” How were you/your shop able to attract a diverse cross section of the population? How do we become more inclusive?

Thank you

May Peace Go With You

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Permalink Reply by Caiken on October 23, 2015 at 5:02am

Without a little bit more information, this is sort of a hard question to answer! Are your volunteer hours a certain time? Where are you located? Do you have people doing outreach or making relationships with other bike organizations, clubs, schools that you could invite in? Do you have a presence at events that might help with that?

Often times I think people have a hard time going to shop hours that don't try and target people who work a lot or kids in school--sometimes a weeknight is just not going to work, and Saturdays are hard for sure!

Its a slow road, but I totally admire your attitude!

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Permalink Reply by Waymond Smith on October 23, 2015 at 5:44am

The volunteer hours and days are Tuesday 5-9pm, Wednesday 12-5pm and Saturday 12-5pm. The shop is located in Pilsen (2400 S. Western Ave.) I'm not really certain about the outreach that's being done by others, I also mention that volunteers are needed to customers. Also, I'm not certain if there's a concerted effort to reach out to a more diverse group of potential volunteers.