Lives upcycled

Oasis residents volunteer at Recycling Center

A residential program for women in need brought new volunteers to the Bella Vista Recycling Center. Now, when people drop off their recycling and are met by a volunteer who helps sort items, there’s a good chance that volunteer is a resident of Oasis of Northwest Arkansas.

Oasis provides a home to women who are committed to changing their lives, but it’s not a free ride. Oasis residents spend 30 to 40 hours each week at school, job training or work. Everyone spends some time volunteering at the Recycling Center.

The Recycling Center uses mostly volunteer labor. In return for volunteering, the center gives grants to nonprofits designated by the worker. Oasis volunteers earn $6 an hour in grant money for the program. The grants help pay program expenses, including the three homes where Oasis residents live.

Volunteers also learn some basic employment skills, director Cathy Luck says, like working as a team and following instructions. When Oasis accepts a new resident, she always spends some time working at the Recycling Center, and the staff uses that time to design a program around the resident’s skills.

“They’re always happy to be here,” Recycling Center Director Lou Stirek says about the Oasis volunteers. There’s little training needed, he explains, because new volunteers usually arrive with more seasoned workers who do all the training.

“You’d be surprised at the number of people who need help,” he says. There are always elderly patrons who have trouble carrying bags of recycling. The volunteers unload for them. But more importantly, they can educate everyone who arrives to recycle.

People tend to bring nonrecyclable items, and that costs the center money. The center must pay its own trash bill, so when volunteers remove an item from a recycling bin and throw it in the trash, it adds to the bill.

“We may take it once,” Stireck says about nonrecyclable material. The volunteers who help out front have the responsibility of educating the public, he adds, and since Republic Services took over trash service, there are more new recyclers.

“The people are great,” says Pamela Palasty, an Oasis volunteer. Even when she corrects people, they are usually nice.

“I didn’t know what to

expect,” she says about working at the center, “but it’s an easy job.”

When no one is dropping off, she looks through the bins and pulls out anything that doesn’t belong.

When the bins she supervises are full, she sometimes rolls them inside to process. She likes to call it squishing the contents. It’s satisfying to watch, she says.

She usually volunteers with another Oasis resident, and they have time in between customers to talk, she adds.

Luck says some Oasis residents learn marketable skills at the center — driving a fork lift or running a baler. A few women have been offered jobs at the center.

When she’s not at the Recycling Center, Palasty is at school at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. She plans to finish the two-year program at Oasis and decide exactly what to do next with her career.

She has a grown daughter who is very proud of her, Palasty says.