Ask Not What Yor Coop Can Do For You…
Hi Fellow travelers on the POCA ship of awesomness,
As I try to come down from POCAfest, assimilate all the good information/systems tweaks into the clinic, and gear up for the next phase of POCA Circle work, all I can think of is:
how much we've all done,
how much we want to do,
how much more we can find out about what POCA members need and want,
and how many hours from volunteers that's all going to take to get done.
Whew! Exciting, inspired, frankly a little daunting, but absolutely possible…
with your help.
Every Circle has on-going projects that need your help right now.
Each Circle has a list of necessary, requested, and AWESOME projects that COULD be happening if we had the member-power behind them.
All these projects are geared towards:
educating about the amazing, amazing gift that is CA, helping clinics get off the ground, getting help to clinics once they're running, share practical tools and resources, grow the movement to reach more people, create the infrastructure we need to help patients, students, practitioners, and communities.
Sounds great, doesn't it? Please consider joining a POCA Circle and offering your time and talents. We need you.
And yes, we're all busy running our own clinics and lives. But if you scan the list of POCA circle workers, you will find owners and employees in some of the biggest, busiest clinics in the country, so….ya know, that one can only go so far. Also, how great to get to hang with some of these crazy folks!
You can decide how much time you have to offer, jump in and hear what's happening, find something that fits for you.. whether it's a short-term event or task, or contributions to a larger team project over time.
Here's a link to get you started in the right direction, https://pocacoop.com/forums/viewthread/4624/
So, if you've wanted to see some result in a particular idea or project–if you've ever wished or suggested–this is a great opportunity to see these things through.
Or if you've just been eternally grateful for what you've found here on CAN/POCA, now's a great time to pitch in and make sure the next round of CA seekers find an even better organization.
And did I mention it's also so much fun–really, honestly, truly? With a crazy, inspiring, wonderful group of people you will love to know? There's laughing and fun while it's all getting done.
We need your help, your enthusiasm, your talents, some of your time, hopefully lots of your laughter. Please join us.
Author: melissa tiernan
Found community acupuncture in my last year of acupuncture school and it was like cool water on the dry desert of aculand. It addressed all those nagging questions of how to make acupuncture accessible and inviting to people like me, in my own communities as well as actually make a living and I knew I would practice this way for the rest of my life. I have learned more (about acupuncture, about people and community, about myself) in the past few years of running a CA clinic and being an acupunk at another BDC clinic than ever before. It's one of my all-time favorite places to be. I am eternally grateful to this community for its welcoming support, its passionate determination and its irreverence for useless sacred cows. I look forward to our continued work in supporting community acupuncture clinics worldwide!
I’m disappointed that no one has commented on your excellent blog, Melissa. I know people are busy in their clinics, doing marketing, taking care of their families, trying to have some semblance of a social life.
The co-op doesn’t run itself, guys….there aren’t all these “Circle Fairies” doing all the work in the departments. In case it isn’t clear, POCA has 4 part time (some only 10 hours a week, some more like 20-30) employees to take care of members, databases, and money. The rest is done by volunteers, and I can vouch for the fact that we’re not invisible little people who only come out at night and sprinkle fairy dust or wave a wand to get things done. We give up an evening or two every week to meet in circles to build, maintain, and enhance the POCA structure so it’s something we can all be proud of – we look for deals for POCA members, we help struggling clinics, we write articles for the newsletter, work (work hard) on the website improvements, we create, order, and ship merchandise, we work in the regions to organize local meetings, arrange for CEU’s and conferences, work with vendors and organizations. And between meetings we’re working on our goals for the next meeting.
Did you enjoy POCAfest? Are you planning to go to the next POCAfest? Maybe you can help with the planning or implementation.
Do you regularly use the website? Are there things about it you’d like to see changed? Consider helping out on just one project.
Do you have an idea for an article for the newsletter? Write it and send it in.
Merchandising ideas? Bring it.
Have you been helped by Clinic Success? Think about giving back, or better yet, paying forward. The more you know about how the “good” clinics make it, the better prepared you’ll be for taking care of your own clinic.
Are you in a region that’s not yet had a meeting? Maybe you’d host it the first time just to get things going.
Don’t wait for someone to recognize your skills and ask you to help – jump in – you’ll be in good company. We really need your help, or we wouldn’t be asking.
I’ll second all the above comments and also say that if we think of the last year as POCA’s gestation and birth, we’re now in POCA’s infancy, except, unlike a human infant the POCA infant is capable of walking, talking, and driving a car. But this baby needs as many folks putting in their time, ideas, and energy to make it all ours. It’s not enough to just walk and talk and drive, we need the weight of many members keeping the rubber to the road, andnavigating the many paths that move us in the direction of our greater mission.
Not only are there literally hundreds of great ideas to be pursued and manifested, but this is a participatory organization that needs its members to engage. As we move through POCA’s infancy, attracting and signing up our patient/community members, creating something new and different than CAN, we’ll need a groundswell of participation from the various regions, individual clinics, punk/student members and from other organizations who are in support of POCA’s mission. If you’ve been a member of CAN in the past, reading these forum for years, or even if you’re brand new here:
— Ask what you can do… An answer is waiting.