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Like many communities both small and large throughout the United States, Manchester and Coffee County depends on a network of dedicated community volunteers to do everything from meal deliveries to animal rescues and senior citizen outreach. This new monthly feature will shine the spotlight on those individuals striving to make a difference in their community.

For 22-year-old Manchester native Alison Smith, volunteering is something she began doing during her college days while attending a Christian university.

“Volunteering was mandatory to graduate, so I just kind of researched different options for volunteering,” Smith said. “I was volunteering at a hospital there and I kind of fell in love with just helping people when they are vulnerable and sick.”

Smith decided she wanted to continue to volunteer while home in Manchester during her college breaks, so she began to research local volunteer opportunities and Compassus of Tullahoma caught her attention.

Compassus offers a variety of home-based services including home health, infusion therapy, palliative and hospice care. The Tullahoma Compassus provides care to those in Coffee, Cannon, Bedford, Moore, Franklin and Grundy County, while locations in Columbia and Lawrenceburg are active in an additional six counties in Middle Tennessee.

“I emailed the volunteer coordinator Julia Logan-Mayes and kind of talked to her and we got together and talked about what I wanted to do and then I just started volunteering,” Smith said. “That was about two-and-a-half years ago.”

Smith said one of the most significant things she did as a volunteer was just to spend time with patients in hospice care. This also provides patient caregivers with a small break to accomplish other things such as running errands or just take a few minutes for themselves during the day.

“It is either in their home or it could be in a nursing home or wherever they are at,” she said.

While hospice care might evoke thoughts of sadness because volunteers are interacting with individuals at the end of their life, Smith said it is important to focus on that aspect of it.

“You definitely kind of expect a lot of sadness and just hard stories, but whenever you do the training they tell you to remember that they are still people,” she said. “It is really interesting to get to know them as the people they are and not as sick people.”

Volunteer Coordinator Julia Logan-Mayes said volunteers play a critical role at Compassus.

“For one thing it is a Medicare requirement that all hospices have a volunteer program, and not only that but 5% of our clinical hours have to be provided by volunteers,” Logan-Mayes said. “That is a pretty hefty number because we have 12 counties that we have been serving for about 28 years.”

Logan-Mayes said Compassus volunteers can choose from an array of ways to volunteering, including administrative work in its Tullahoma office, sitting with patients, caregiver relief, errands as well as motional, spiritual and cultural support.

While volunteering, Smith was also able to ride along with a Compassus social worker.

“It definitely showed me that is what I want to do, so it was a good experience,” she said.

Smith is currently working towards her master’s degree in social work with a goal of doing hospice social work.

Smith said the patients she has spent time with have shared a lot of wisdom and life stories.

“When I was pregnant they would always talk to me about their pregnancy or whenever they had kids and just their fun stories were really fun to hear,” she said. “Just different life stories that can teach you a lot of different things. How you can live your life better, really. You learn a lot when you are talking to people.”

Logan-Mayes said more volunteers are needed, and she would love to have some veterans volunteer.

“I am really looking for veterans because…..it is just a special thing when somebody gets to the point when they are on our service and maybe they haven’t really talked a lot about the war experience and to have a veteran volunteer they might open up,” she said. “It is always important to tell their story again to some new ears that come in the house and for us to validate that is always important at the end of life. Just to know that yeah, you had a meaningful life and to tell somebody about it is super important.”

When it comes to volunteering, Smith said she would encourage perspective volunteers to give it a try.

“I would say definitely just get involved, message someone to get involved and try to just get started because you will learn a lot and it will be a lot of fun,” she said.

For more information about volunteer opportunities at Compassus, contact Volunteer Coordinator Julia Logan-Mayes at Julia.logan-mayes@compassus.com or call 931-455-911.