This week is Volunteer Appreciation Week and it reminds us of how essential volunteers are to our organization.
IHS was founded as a volunteer-driven response to homelessness. In the 1970s, our grassroots work was affectionately called the Peanut Butter Ministry because
Father Claude DuTeil and a group of
volunteers made and shared peanut butter sandwiches with homeless individuals on Honolulu's streets. By 1980, we officially became the nonprofit Institute for Human Services. As an institute, IHS was ignited by students pursuing professions in a wide range of specialties including nursing, psychiatry, dentistry and social work. These students gained practical experience towards their careers and served Oahu’s most vulnerable populations of men, women and children. Today, their work, supplemented by our staff professionals, church groups,
civic organizations, and friends like you, continues to drive the success
of the organization.
Individual volunteers like
Rhonda Khabir, whose story you can read below, also energize and inspire our work. In the past year, she mobilized her colleagues to host a holiday clothing drive, donate office supplies, and secure pallets of bed sheets and blankets for use at our shelters. Rhonda is also regularly in our kitchen with us helping with meal service.
We have current needs for volunteers to serve meals, sort donations, bag supplies to deliver to unsheltered homeless, and more.
As an essential organization, our volunteers are also regarded as essential workers.
If you are willing and able at this time, we'd love to have you join our team as a volunteer. Please complete our
volunteer interest form
and we will match you to an opportunity that works for you.
Gratefully,
