{"id":24120,"date":"2025-01-07T16:30:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T23:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/want-to-get-more-involved-in-montezuma-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:48:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:48:58","slug":"want-to-get-more-involved-in-montezuma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/want-to-get-more-involved-in-montezuma-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to get more involved in Montezuma County?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The first annual Community Involvement Expo, in 2023. (Courtesy Montezuma Leadership Network)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In an effort to connect organizations in need of volunteers with those interested in volunteering, there will be an event at the Montezuma County Annex Building on Thursday, Jan. 9 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s advertised on flyers around town as the Community Involvement Expo, and it\u2019s the second one by the Montezuma Leadership Network.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can build an idea in the community that it does<\/em> take a village, and get used to that being our way of showing up, it would help everyone so much,\u201d said Mary Jo Standard, the community involvement specialist for the group putting on the expo.<\/p>\n

The group putting it on, the Montezuma Leadership Network<\/a>, is Cortez-based and, according to its website, formed in May 2022 to strengthen training programs in Montezuma County that were threatened after the pandemic, and in the wake of people retiring, moving or changing careers.<\/p>\n

Local nonprofits are still struggling to find volunteers, though there\u2019s no numbers to illustrate this since they\u2019re so under-resourced, Standard said.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s expo brought in over 200 community members and 50 organizations seeking volunteers.<\/p>\n

So far, 36 organizations have registered to attend on Thursday, and Standard said they\u2019re trying to recruit at least 10 more.<\/p>\n

They try and cater to a \u201cbroad interest range\u201d and include a variety of organizations in the expo, since people who volunteer prefer to spend time doing something they care about, Standard said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully we can connect community members with something they\u2019re passionate about doing,\u201d Standard said.<\/p>\n

To be sure, under-resourced nonprofit organizations aren\u2019t unique to Montezuma County; it\u2019s a problem most every community in rural Colorado faces, Standard said.<\/p>\n

And to better \u2013 and easier \u2013 connect volunteers with these under-resourced nonprofits and vice versa, there\u2019s a website through United Way for Southwest Colorado, available at getconnected.unitedway-swco.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All 36 organizations registered for this year\u2019s expo have a profile on the site, and will have QR codes at the event for people to scan and see available opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re slowly getting there,\u201d said Standard. \u201cIt really does take a village. That\u2019s how we thrive, and how we build a thriving village.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An
An advertisement for the Montezuma County Community Involvement Expo, which will be at the county\u2019s annex building on Jan. 9 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan. 9 will let people know how to get started <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78408,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24120\/revisions\/78408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24120"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}