Volunteering with FBH
You, our members, are our greatest resource. A variety of opportunities are available to fit your interests, talents, and schedule. Let us know how you’d like to get involved!
Call 781-828-1805 or email: info@FriendsoftheBlueHills.org.
Call 781-828-1805 or email: info@FriendsoftheBlueHills.org.
Trail Maintenance and Clean-up
- Individual Events: Join a work party of FBHers and DCR staff. Tools will be supplied, just bring your hands, gloves, some water and a smile. Sign up and we will contact you a month in advance of the date.
- Adopt-a-Trail: It’s not just for highways and traffic islands. Contact us and choose a trail (or section of trail), or ask for a suggestion. We’ll provide training – and furnish you with a tip sheet and report form. Adoption commitments are for one year. Just let us know via snail mail or e-mail each time you work on the trail, if you need help, and the state of the trail before and afterwards.
Outreach and Events
- Event Planning: Help plan events, like work party days and other programs designed to raise awareness and garner public support for the park. Volunteers are part of a well-run committee, dedicated to accomplishing the maximum effect with the fewest number of meetings.
- Adopt-a-Trail Advocate: Advocate for the Reservation among the park's corporate constituents. Contact companies and introduce them to the program. You will be furnished with a kit, including background on the Reservation, program requirements, and sample tip sheets and reports for potential adopters.
- Outreach in the Park: The park itself is the best place to find supporters and potential members. Help us reach the people who care most about the park by spending a few hours in the park collecting signatures, tabling at an event, or distributing raffle tickets.
Advocacy
- Attend Local Municipal Meetings: Many development projects that affect the park are announced only in public notices in local papers or at local municipal meetings. These notices give dates and times when local boards hold hearings on requests for zoning changes, to review site plans, or to obtain permits. The only way we know about these projects is if our volunteers see the notice or attend these meetings. If you live in a town adjacent to the park (Braintree, Canton, Dedham, Milton, Quincy, Randolph, or Readville) help us know what's going on by reading the local paper, attending some of your town's Planning Board, Zoning Board or Conservation Commission meetings, and getting to know the operation of your local government.
- Campaign-related Activities: Every potential threat to the park – whether it's lack of funding for key park resources or potentially damaging proposals from developers – requires FBH to adopt a different approach. Learn about one of these issues and some of the methods used in a campaign. Activities could include organizing a letter-writing campaign, sending letters to the editor, or working with other groups to promote the issue.
Administrative opportunities – Tying it all together
- Database Development Advisor: Work with FBH, DCR, and the Appalachian Mountain Club to develop a trails database to track information of the condition of trails and work done to maintain and improve them.
- Database Coordinator: Help enter data and generate reports using the Trails Database.
General Volunteer Opportunities
- Website: Help with posting, updating, and modifying the FBH website and blog, our most public face.
- FBH Newsletter: Publish with us! Submit your photos and write articles! Use your experience with desktop publishing to help us reach our members!
- Administration: Help get mailings out. We have over 900 members and we want to reach them all!