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Influential San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara County leaders giving an hour!
TV Host, Author, and Director of the Central Coast Writers Conference
Teri Bayus 2/11/2020
TMHA: I imagine you’ve been a volunteer in other agencies?
Teri Bayus: I have! I do a lot with the libraries...anything literacy. We have foster kids, too, which isn’t really a volunteer job, but… We have six. We were really good at at-risk teens, so they got placed [with us] a lot. But now they’re all grown and successful! So I did my job.
TMHA: So literacy is really important to you?
TB: Yeah, I do anything I can with literacy. I work a lot with Friends of the Library...because the libraries, they keep trying to defund them. Each library is their own 501(c)3, so each library “Friend” group only fundraises for that library...the librarian in each branch tells the fundraisers what they need. ...So most of it is through book sales, but then two or three times a year they have to do something more creative.
TMHA: So what’s your favorite volunteer gig?”
TB: I help fundraise for Fort Hope, if you’ve heard of that one. That’s the most awesome thing in the world - nobody knows about it! … What they decided to do was to take their property and turn it into an 1885 town. And so what Pat [Loomis] did was...he made it so, like, everything there is from the 1800s. And he takes at-risk youth and sick kids, and brings them out there for a day...and these kids just get to experience this thing that they’ve never seen before. ...And it’s never open to anybody but children, but about once a year he opens it up and lets the grownups come. And they have, like, a blacksmith, and there’s a candlemaker, there’s a jail... and so, what I was instrumental in doing is, we did a life-mapping program. So life-mapping is - we took the Grizzly [Academy] kids, and most of them feel like they are where they are…it’s very hard for at-risk teens to see a future. So with life-mapping, we say, all right, you can have anything you want. Tell me what car you’re going to drive, what house you’re going to have, what your wife looks like, what your kids look like, what you do during the day. And then we back it out, and say if you want a Mercedes, then you have to have this much money, and in order to have this much money you need to have a college degree, so right now you start doing this. And they meet with real estate agents and bankers and nurses and nutritionists, and so by the end of the day, they’ve mapped out their perfect future. ...I wish somebody would’ve done that with me when I was 18. We’re just blindly going through it.
TMHA: Can you think of any memories you have of volunteerism?
TB: You know, I was a girl scout all the way until 12, and then I joined Rainbow Girls. ...And so, my favorite [fundraiser] was making gingerbread houses and selling them. I do a gingerbread house party every year. So we build the gingerbread houses and then our friends come over and decorate them. So that’s the one that’s stuck with me the longest. I mean, this is going on 67 years of gingerbread houses.
TMHA: And is it continuing to support the Rainbow Girls?
TB: No, a lot of them go to old folks homes...nobody has to buy them.
TMHA: Ah, so the tradition continues. … I wonder what you think are the benefits of volunteerism for the person participating as a volunteer.
TB: I am a big proponent of stepping outside of your comfort zone, and so what better way to do that than to volunteer. Because you never know what you’re going to get, right? Each day is different. ...I think you learn more by stepping outside of your comfort zone than anything else, and volunteering is the best way to do that. ...If I spend a couple of days volunteering, I think it enriches everybody’s lives.