Did you know that you can volunteer at the Olympic and Paralympic Games? According to Jack Bloom’s Seattle Times article, Local Olympic volunteers have long been ‘training’ for these Games, “The 25,000 Games volunteers were selected from a pool of 75,000 applicants from 140 countries.”
Some volunteers are sharing their experience at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics on their blogs:
In her January 31st post, 5Ws, on her blog, JBlog: My Journey to the 2010 Winter Olympics, Jennifer Blodgett wrote about the process of becoming an Olympic volunteer, which began with applying all the way back in the summer of 2008.
She is also writing on Twitter about volunteering and tweeted today:
“Heading to Vancouver tonight to start my Olympic volunteer experience. So excited!!! Any tweeps going to be out there? #olympics #goc“
Joyce, who traveled all the way from Scotland to volunteer, is writing about her experience on her 2010 Olympic Volunteer’s Blog. In her February 6th post, The Olympic Torch arrived in Whistler yesterday, she wrote about being an Olympic Torch volunteer:
“My first duty was to help assemble the main stage, which was not a light or clean job! The crew responsible for the Torch Relay have now set up and taken down the stage 99 times and still have more to do as the Torch heads for Vancouver…well done lads!
. . . My next task after lunch was to help distribute Canada flags and pins to crowds arriving to see the celebrations. It was a lot of fun mingling with the people, seeing how excited they were getting, how patriotic they were with their painted faces, banners, scarves, gloves and hats . . .
. . . .As I was a Torch volunteer I was fortunate to be able to get inside the front fence at the stage, it was fantastic to be so close to the action.”
In his February 6th post, The Village is Getting Busy, on, My Experience as a Volunteer: Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Glenn Yonemitsu wrote:
“On Wednesday, we had a real treat as we got to eat in the Athletes section, as part of their test for the Village opening. What a great facility the athletes have. They have food stations serving almost every kind of cuisine you might want . . .
. . .One of the perks of volunteering is that I get to attend the dress rehearsal of the Opening Ceremonies next week.
. . . I have a few days off and plan to visit the Olympic Headquarters for pin trading, at the downtown Bay department store. There was one man in the news who had 20,000 pins. Amazing.”
If you can wait two years, you can register your interest and receive email updates about volunteering during the London 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Their site says that they’ll need 70,000 volunteers, but I’m not sure if they’re accepting international volunteers. Their Volunteer Programme page says, “We’ll recruit volunteers from across the UK – from a range of communities and backgrounds.” It couldn’t hurt to sign up for more information though, right?
