Introducing...Joan Smith!

Besides serving as Midwest Representative for the St. Vincent Pallotti Center, I’m Director of Volunteer Services for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of St. Louis, a federation of agencies serving people in need from before birth until life’s end. 

It’s a privilege to work with volunteers, people who are looking for ways to share the best part of themselves.   My personal definition of volunteering is “organized kindness.”  I’ve discovered almost everyone has a desire to help.  The first step, coming forward, usually is the hardest.  Perhaps we all instinctively know volunteering is one of those experiences with unlimited potential and great power for change.

I backed into volunteer management about 25 years ago while volunteering for a small nonprofit agency.  Once you start volunteering, there’s no telling where it might end!  Before I knew it, I went from peer training new volunteers to serving on the board to serving nearly 12 years as executive director.  During that period, I had the distinction of being asked to travel to Cyprus during the war in Lebanon to train a group of 30 young people in active listening techniques and added them to the approximately 500 other volunteers I got to train.  I later served as program director of Vincentian Service Corps, headquartered here in St. Louis, and then came to Catholic Charities and the Pallotti Center. The phrase I most often hear from volunteers is, “I got much more than I gave.”  That’s true for me, too.  I thoroughly enjoy helping someone find just the right placement.  I’m happiest when everybody wins—the volunteer, the agency, and most of all the people who are helped because I appreciate it’s much easier to give help than to receive it.