Volunteer to listen to people

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**It is important to read and understand all these expectations before you apply to become a Listener.**

Listen.One exists because of three reasons; we believe we are made to love everyone, we believe in the Holy Spirit to guide us and we believe that Jesus can impact anyone’s life anywhere at anytime.

The challenge for us is to love our neighbors - all our neighbors! It is difficult to love our neighbors who aren’t easy and convenient to love when our normal routines of life create comfort zones that keep us from meeting others. We believe that to start actively loving our neighbors starts with getting to know who they are.

People are seeking to feel known and that takes time. Most of the time it is not just a few chat messages sent back and forth. It’s following up the next day to check in with them to see how they are doing. It’s about building relationships and that takes time to build trust and friendship. Think of this as a pen pal service using email, text messages and phone calls.

The time commitment is about 2-5 hours per week. Volunteer Listeners all work from home and set their own schedule.

To support our volunteer Listeners, we have weekly group phone calls with all Listeners to learn from other Listeners and ask questions of the group.

Our guidelines for our Volunteer Listeners

1. Pray that the Holy Spirit guides you and helps you to be mentally present and that your conversations will be peaceful, non-judgmental and encouraging.
2. Always set the time expectation with the Sharer. Make sure they know how much time you have to chat and when you will be able to chat next.
3. Show the Sharer respect - do not multitask while chatting. Be comfortable and have fun but don’t jump into their talk with your opinions or your experiences. Don’t be distracted by your surroundings. Show this person that they are the most important person in your life at this moment. No preaching, no condemning, no judging, no advice.
4. Acknowledge what the Sharer says. Use your imagination to put yourself in their shoes - not with your history but with theirs. Don’t think about how you would do things better or how you are going to offer a solution.
5. Be curious!
• Ask specific clarifying questions around - Who? What? When? Where? You can also clarify what they said by simply asking "Are you saying that...? Restate what you hear.
• Get to know more about them: "Were you afraid?" "How did this change things for you?" "How did you deal with that?"

If you are excited about joining our listening team, please take the time now to fill out our application form. https://listen.one/listening-team/

This is the first step.

Listen.One is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit our website to learn more about us. https://listen.one