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Goals, mission linked to volunteer involvement
By Rob Sadowsky
Last month, the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation held its 2007 Member
Meeting at the Chicago
Cultural Center. More than 150 members and friends participated
in the unveiling of our new 20-year
vision of bicycling in Chicagoland and celebrated the accomplishments
of our organization.
This event grows each year. It provides our members opportunities
to become engaged in our work in meaningful ways. Interested in
learning how to get involved in our work? Here are a few of the
many opportunities:
1. Join one of the board’s committees (from event strategy
to finance to marketing and communications) and help direct our
work. Each committee is responsible for a general area of our work
and helps develop policy, brainstorm strategies for implementation,
and monitor the success of the work. In some cases, the committees
are actually doing the work. In other cases, staff execute the work.
2. Get involved in local advocacy and planning campaigns. We will
be developing a long-term vision for bicycle and pedestrian facilities
and programs throughout the six-county area and Northwest Indiana.
Members work with our planning staff to prioritize trails, bikeways,
programming and intersection redesign. We’ll then put a price
tag on the improvements and figure out how to fund the work from
a local, state and federal perspective. Interested? Contact our
Director of Advocacy and Volunteers, John Haley at johnh@biketraffic.org.
3. Volunteer! Got a particular skill or interest that you’d
like to contribute? We will work with you to find a way to involve
you in our work. We have more than 500 volunteers working to make
our 20-year vision come to fruition. Some of our volunteers work
on events, help develop regional maps, spread the word through our
Road Show, stuff envelopes and make phone calls, assist in reviewing
legal contracts, provide copy editing for newsletters, write articles
for Bike Traffic and bike>>blog,
or just come out to public meetings.
John’s the guy to contact for ideas of how to get involved.
Don’t know what you’d like to do? Come to our Monday
night volunteer parties. Help around the office and meet other bicycling
advocates every first and third Monday of the month. Contact Liz
Farina Markel for more information at liz@biketraffic.org.
We have taken some tremendous strides in the past three years, but
we don’t take big steps without the help of our members. Your
contributions and dues go far beyond financial assistance —
it gives our voice more power and strength.
Rob Sadowsky is the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s executive
director.
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