Skaggs Community Health Center new release:

This holiday season think about giving your time as a gift, and you might be surprised at just how great it makes you feel. Volunteering promotes greater happiness, enhanced self-esteem, improved physical health, and a greater sense of happiness and optimism according to a study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The volunteers at Skaggs Community Health Center touch the lives of people in the region every day. Clarann Harrison, 74, has been a volunteer at Skaggs since 1997, she says, “Helping other people during a stressful time in their life is what volunteering at Skaggs is all about.” Harrison says every day is a different day, filled with new faces and new things. She says as long as she is able, she will put on her blue vest and head to Skaggs where helping others also means helping yourself. She says, “It also gives me something to do and look forward to, otherwise I’d just sit in front of the T.V.” Last year Harrison was recognized for giving Skaggs 1400 hours of service.

Volunteer Coordinator, Francie Hattabaugh, says, “You can’t measure in the material things what you get out of it”, however there are some other benefits Skaggs volunteers gain from their hours of service. They’re given a meal allowance, free flu shots, a Health Risk Assessment, and there is an annual awards banquet honoring individual hours of service.

Volunteers come as far away as Cape Fair, Missouri and Omaha, Arkansas. Last year the more than 300 volunteers at Skaggs Community Health Center gave an amazing 59,000 hours of service. Volunteers give of themselves 4 to 12 hours a week, and Skaggs works with their volunteers’ schedules, as Hattabaugh says, “You tell us - we don’t tell you when you’re going to be here.”

Interested in becoming a volunteer at Skaggs Community Health Center? Call Francie Hattabaugh at (417) 335-7348 for more information.