NOTE FROM THE COORDINATORS

E. B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and many other books and essays, was reported to have said when asked to offer an analysis of humor and why it works, "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."

Similarly, we can give many reasons why people volunteer, but what's important is that The Vegetarian Resource Group has been able to continually do outreach over the last 33 years because of all our great volunteers and donors. All volunteers are special. We appreciate Suzanne Hengen for doing nutrition analyses for the recipes in Vegetarian Journal for many years and Carole Hamlin and Jane Michalek for proofreading the articles. We send kudos to the many, many indispensable volunteers in Baltimore and across the country.

This past year, three volunteers have especially gone beyond the call of duty. Thank you to David Milner, who weekly has been converting articles and handouts into HTML for our website, www.vrg.org. More than 250,000 people per month visit the website for information. This is only possible with volunteers like David. According to QCRRANK, out of the top one million websites in the U.S., by visits, we are in the top 8% at 76,500. According to Alexa, another site that tracks web data, we were at about 62,000.

Matt Baker, RN comes into the office every Friday for several hours to help with clerical work and research, and on weekends he assists at outreach booths.The assistance is, of course, greatly appreciated, but the psychological boost of an ongoing dependable person is invaluable.

We live in a society where many people want to volunteer for a short time or write one article. This is helpful, but can be done only in conjunction with long-term ongoing volunteers and donors. Thank you to Matt and David, who help other volunteers' work see the light of day.

Finally, thank you to Reed Mangels, PhD, RD, who continues to give her professional nutrition expertise as well as organizational help on a weekly basis to The Vegetarian Resource Group, assisting young people, seniors, reporters, food companies, and health professionals. To be honest, there are a lot of people who have suggestions and complain about what can be made better in the world, but Matt, David, and Reed are the change we want the world to be.

If you would like to volunteer, whether with outreach, clerical work, or organizational development, please drop us a note at [email protected] listing your skills, interests, and availability. Thank you!