You will be working at Warm Heart as an unpaid volunteer or intern or coop student. But you will also be working for an organization that is providing essential services to people with critical needs. When we hire you, we do not adjust our expectations of you downward because we are not paying you. We will invest time and effort and a great deal of responsibility in you, all of which we value more than money. You must understand that we have the highest expectations of you.
Warm Heart is a friendly and laid back organization to work for. We dress casually. We do not have titles. We do not believe in hierarchy. We delegate to a fault. Our office is a single, open space. We value and encourage everyone’s input. We spend time playing with children and gardening. We believe that everyone can contribute and we will teach you the skills you need.
We also expect an extraordinary level of output. We expect people to be at work on time, not ten minutes late. We expect people to give us their full day, uninterrupted by email, web surfing, or long lunches. We expect people to put in forty hours a week. We expect all hands on deck when there’s an emergency. We expect team players who step in when they see another staff member who needs help. We expect self-starters who don’t sit around waiting to be told to do something. We expect people to contribute original ideas, not just do a job. We expect problem solvers who look at difficulties as challenges and not as excuses to throw up their hands. We expect every complaint to be followed by a constructive suggestion about how to eliminate the irritation.
Phrao is a desperately poor place. Warm Heart is a new organization. We are neither dumb nor naïve. We know better than anyone that for a long time we are going to measure our progress on a journey of many miles in mere inches.
But at Warm Heart we expect our people to believe that the glass is always half full.