GET INVOLVED
VOLUNTEER AT WMLA
WMLA is a 100% volunteer-run organizing drive of low-income service, temporary and domestic workers and their families. Your participation will make a difference from your first day in the door. Don’t wait, call today!
Call: (413) 443-9862
Why Invest Your Time with WMLA
With WMLA, your time is an investment in all our futures; no worker can be safe when tens of thousands of Berkshire County’s lowest income-workers are denied lives of decency and dignity. A wealthy few control our government and unless we build strength through independent organization, our conditions will never improve. You can make a difference your first day with WMLA!
Who Will Benefit
Volunteers work to advance the goals of WMLA’s members expressed through the decisions made by their leadership body, the Berkshire County Workers Benefit Council (WBC). WMLA members are the backbone of the economy, working in tourism and healthcare, as well as other low-paid occupations such as temp work at plastics manufacturers. By volunteering with WMLA you are joining the just cause of these workers in our effort to secure living wages and leave absolutely no
one behind.
What You Can Learn
As a volunteer, you will gain first-hand knowledge of the situation facing seasonal and service workers, learn professional organizing skills through on-the-job training and have the opportunity to attend classes on the history of labor in the United States and movements for change; we must understand the past so we can change the future!
HOW IT WORKS
No Machines or Automated Phone Trees
Just Human Contact
WMLA’s phone lines are staffed by volunteers who are ready to answer your call!
You Call Us
Call us seven days a week, including evenings.
We Answer
A volunteer will answer your call and any of your questions.
You Schedule to Volunteer
No prior experience is necessary and you are productive your first day as a volunteer!
UPCOMING EVENTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
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Food Distributions
45% of adults in Berkshire County are food insecure. 100,000 Massachusetts residents have had their food stamp benefits discontinued by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. WMLA operates an emergency food closet 365 days a year from 9am - 9pm. Twice weekly, volunteers drive, pack and deliver donated fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh-baked bread as well as dairy products and prepared foods to WMLA members enrolled in Benefit Plan II, a budget-savings program.
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Benefit Advocacy
Service workers, domestic workers and other low-paid workers can’t win without strong organization. WMLA teaches the skill of advocacy. You can learn how to fight to keep a member’s lights on; help workers win back unpaid wages and expunge medical debt; and fight government and corporate denials to the most vulnerable in our community.
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Benefit Clothing Office
WMLA’s Benefit Clothing Office is located on the lower level of its Office Central. Members can get good quality used clothing and household items for a suggested donation of ten cents an item. Volunteers are urgently needed to staff the office and process incoming donations, as well as keep members apprised of organizational events and activities.
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Membership Canvass
WMLA membership canvasses are the lifeblood of our grassroots service worker organizing drive. Alone and isolated we cannot achieve anything; united we can win! Volunteers canvass door-to-door in low-income neighborhoods where members and potential members live, to build organization where it’s needed the most.
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Publication Session
Join WMLA’s publication staff! You can learn — or help teach — how to produce the next issue of WMLA’s membership newspaper, the Western Massachusetts Alliance News, to tell the truth about low-income workers organizing for economic justice, and our seasonal Sponsors Guide. We also need volunteers to design flyers. Call WMLA!
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Community Outreach
Volunteers set up information tables in front of grocery stores, at local community events and other locations to promote WMLA so that others can join our cause. This is one way WMLA enlists new friends and participants to come in and make a difference. Please call if you can volunteer or if you know of a location where WMLA can set up an information table.
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Mailout Session
Volunteers prepare and send letters about our current campaigns to people who have joined WMLA and have expressed an interest in volunteering or supporting WMLA. We need volunteers to help with the daily letter mailouts as well as to assist with the bulk mailing of WMLA’s membership newspaper and Sponsors Guide.
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Phoning Training Session
Volunteers are essential to all of WMLA’s activities year-round. Volunteers conduct group telephone training sessions to call members about upcoming benefit activities and re-contact interested individuals met on community outreach about participating with WMLA’s organizing activities scheduled each week.
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![A man talking to a woman on a business canvass]()
Business Canvass
WMLA volunteers learn how to conduct outreach to the business community, many of whom have a shared interest in the lowest-income seasonal and service workers having wages that allow them to spend money in the local economy and patronize the merchants that need their business to survive.
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Special Events
Every year, WMLA holds a Spring Family Brunch & Children’s Egg Hunt, a Halloween Party and a Holiday Party for members and their children to enjoy. Volunteers are needed for these and other events to serve food, decorate, paint faces and talk to attendees about upcoming activities. Volunteers are also involved in all the preparation for events.
Illustration by London Ladd
Organizing as a Profession
FULL-TIME ORGANIZERS NEEDED!
WMLA provides organizer training through all our activities, giving volunteers the opportunity to become professional volunteer organizers. It requires daring to care, and investing the hard work to learn while doing by getting “on-the-job training.” Volunteers are needed 365 days a year, daytimes and evenings, whether for a day, an hour, a week, a summer, a year or for the rest of your life! We own a strategy, a method and have a track record of success. The only missing ingredient is you! Call WMLA today!