The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service ( NRCS) takes pleasure in recognizing and honoring its Earth Team Volunteers during National Volunteer Week, April 15-21, 2007. In fiscal year 2006, more than 45,000 Earth Team volunteers nationally donated more than 945,000 hours to conservation. In Tennessee, 1,681 volunteers donated 15,506 hours.

The Earth Team Program, created in 1985, offers all types of opportunities to anyone over the age of 14 who is interested in volunteering and making a positive difference for the nation’s natural resources. Earth Team Volunteers help NRCS conservationists provide everything from conservation technical assistance to teaching and generating awareness about conservation through the use of community projects. Volunteers often can be found helping with projects impacting water quality, community beautification, and erosion control. In addition, Earth Team Volunteers can work in NRCS offices providing clerical, computer and writing skills.

We at the NRCS are proud of the dedicated volunteers and employees who have committed their time and talents to conserving and protecting soil, water and wildlife for their community and everyone in it. We hope that National Volunteer Week will motivate others to volunteer their time and talent to help NRCS and it’s mission as we continue Helping People Help the Land.

Additional information on NRCS programs and assistance and the Earth Team volunteer program is available online at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov.

What Others Say About Volunteering

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers. --Ronald Reagan

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. --Mother Teresa

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead

I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living -- the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals. --Marian Wright Edelman

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. --Albert Schweitzer

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Volunteering can be an exciting, growing, enjoyable experience. It is truly gratifying to serve a cause, practice one's ideals, work with people, solve problems, see benefits, and know one had a hand in them. --Harriet Naylor

A volunteer is a person who can see what others cannot see; who can feel what most do not feel. Often, such gifted persons do not think of themselves as volunteers, but as citizens - citizens in the fullest sense: partners in civilization --George Bush

Though government has an important role to play in meeting the many challenges that remain before us, we are coming to understand that no organization, including government, will fully succeed without the active participation of each of us. Volunteers are vital to enabling this country to live up to the true promise of its heritage --Bill Clinton

You will find as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others. --Source Unknown