The CRIBS Blog

So, you want to volunteer for the Receiving Home?

While CRIBS Foundation has already been fortunate enough to have many people doing volunteer work, there are still quite a handful of people who want to volunteer. Unfortunately, not everyone knows what a person needs to do before he or she can be one. Sometimes people who visit the Foundation get rejected entrance to the rooms of the babies because they haven’t made the proper preparations and arrangements.

Let me  brief you with the basics in visiting and becoming a volunteer for CRIBS.

• The first thing you must do is to call CRIBS (681-5921 or 681-8078) and look for Ma’am Liway Flores to book a date for you on when you can come as a volunteer. This is very important because CRIBS has a lot of visitors everyday and it can only accommodate a handful of volunteers. It is very possible that the babies could be overwhelmed by the visitors when there are too many of them.

• Visiting times are from 9-11 am and 2-4 pm everyday. Volunteers are not allowed to enter the babies’ quarters out of the prescribed time because there are already scheduled nap times and other activities for the babies beyond the said time slots.

• CRIBS is located at 30 Major Dizon Street, Industrial Valley Complex, Marikina City. A map can be found here.

• Volunteers are required to bring a white t-shirt and to wear socks. The white t-shirt can have any kind of print, as long as it is clean. You must not wear it on the way to CRIBS, rather, you must wear it in the vicinity itself.

• Volunteers are also required to wash their hands with soap and water before handling the babies. This is to ensure cleanliness of the volunteer to help keep the babies healthy.

• Volunteers are advised not to wear sharp objects such as earrings, watches, necklaces, etc. when handling the babies. The babies are very playful and active, and as such, sharp objects can be very dangerous.

• The use of cellphones and cameras are forbidden inside the receiving home.

• There are three sections in the Foundation: the infants, crawlers, and toddlers sections. Babies from one section cannot go to other sections. For example, a baby from the crawlers section cannot go to the toddlers section. There are special cases wherein a baby is just waiting for the transfer from one section to another, and as such the said baby can go to the other section to interact with the others (ie, baby can already walk, so he or she is already qualified for the toddlers section and can go as the present caretaker prescribes).

• There are certain notes with regard to special care per baby posted on the walls of the quarters (ie motor skills development, language development). If possible, volunteers must follow these notes to ensure the babies’ positive growth. There are caretakers in the vicinity whom a volunteer can ask what he or she can do in the Receiving Home.

• If there are further questions, please don’t hesitate to call CRIBS. Again, the numbers are 681-5921 and 681-8078.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Guidelines, Receiving Home Program. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.