Looking for friends

Feeling very proud today – the project I’ve been working on for the last five months or so came to fruition, with the official (soft) launch of Friends of CEISMIC, a scheme where volunteers come in and work on the archive alongside the team.  It’s very exciting, as it’s been entirely my project through the whole process – right from its start as a vague idea suggested to me at the archiving class I went to in Wellington, through various iterations of proposals to the Directors and Board, and a trial run with the help of Lytteltonwitch, until finally today it was all signed off on and I could make the webpage live and start actively seeking volunteers.  We’ve even got a new volunteer starting tomorrow! (Though I can’t take much credit for that – it’s actually a friend of one of our DCAs, who asked her about volunteering before we’d even advertised the scheme.)
If everything works out, having Friends of CEISMIC volunteers will mean we can make a lot more progress on making our huge backlog of material available to the public, as well as freeing up our DCAs to get out into the community to collect even more material.  Plus hopefully it’ll be interesting for the volunteers, too, and let them feel like they’re doing something really valuable in helping to preserve the story of the earthquakes for future generations.
So, if you know anyone in Christchurch who might like to become a Friend of CEISMIC, send them my way.  To quote from our website, what we’re looking for is:

  • confident and capable using a computer;
  • able to write in clear English, with a good grasp of spelling and grammar;
  • someone who knows Christchurch and the surrounding area well enough to be able to recognise pre-earthquake landmarks and significant buildings and locate them on a map;
  • willing to learn;
  • available for at least two hours a week during office hours;
  • able to commit to volunteering for at least six months.

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