Want to become more involved with your Society? Here are some ways that you can help make your WWCGS better for everyone:
1) Become a part of the Hospitality Committee by:
(a) signing up to be one of two or three members who provide the break-time snacks for a given monthly General Membership Meeting. Action Step: Contact one of the Hospitality Committee Co-Chairs Marge Najarian or Charlotte Neary.
or
(b) volunteering to help arrange tables and chairs prior to a monthly General Membership Meeting. Action Step: Simply show up at the Livonia Senior Center about 5PM on the day of a scheduled Monday membership meeting and seek out Hospitality Committee Logistics Coordinator Raul Rodriguez.
2) Attend a monthly board meeting and learn about the planning and work that goes into making your Society what it is. Action Step: Just show up at the Livonia Civic Center Library by 6:30pm on the date of a scheduled board meeting (usually the 2nd Wednesday of the month).
3) Join the Cemetery Committee and help with one of its ongoing projects of canvassing, transcribing and/or photographing area cemetery grave markers. Action Step: Contact the Cemetery Committee Chair John Mills.
4) Contribute a family history research experience, a special family history photograph, or an interesting story from your family history for publication in the WWCGS newsletter. Action step: Contact Newsletter Chair Harvey DeWitt.
5) Join the Query Management Team and help respond to or redirect inquiries received by the Society. Action step: Contact President Mary Hazlett.
6) Volunteer as an indexer. There are indexing oportunities through the WWCGS' Transcription Guild Team working in conjunction with the Michigan Archives and FamilySearch.org. The team is scheduling one or two indexing work nights a month at the Westland Family History Center. Action step for Transcription Guild projects: Contact Team Leader John Mills for more details about volunteering.
WWCGS is also involved in genealogy indexing projects at the Livonia Civic Center Library. One library project involves indexing engagement and marriage notices that have appeared in the Livonia Observer newspaper. The newspapers are on microfilm and would require a time commitment of about two hours per work session using a microfilm reader at the Library. There is no minimum nor maximum number of work sessions for which you need to volunteer. Another Library project involves creating surname only indices for genealogical books at the Library for which no such index exists. This work may be done at home. Action step for Library projects: Contact WWCGS Librarian Shirley Connors or send an email to info@wwcgs.org with “Library Volunteer” in the subject line.
7) Volunteering for a Roundtable. This involves simply sharing a personal research story, a brickwall find, or possibly something new you found on a website. An experience shared with others for 20 minutes or more will undoubtively spark questions and comments and make for a very good round table discussion. Examples: Mary Hazlett talked about the WWCGS wewbsite in September, 2018. In November, 2018, Steve Schwartz shared his experiences with census research and how he tracks all the discoveries he's found. In May, 2018, Loretta Dunham shared information on the vast holding of the Monroe County Archives. Action step: Contact President Mary Hazlett to discuss your ideas.
