Here’s Paul and Jürgen.
That’s Paul on the left. He’s a designer and web developer here at Cawood. Jürgen is Jürgen Ruckaberle, and he heads up the Eugene Timbers Futbol Club, a soccer program that involves about 700 kids, four of whom belong to Paul.
When Jürgen’s program won an affiliation with the Portland Timbers last year and changed it’s name, Paul reached out to see if he could help with any rebranding that might be needed.
Turns out a logo was already in the works, but the website was badly in need of updating. Paul volunteered to build a new site and help maintain it. It launched last March, and now gets something like 7,000 page views a week. Jürgen’s happy because it’s easier for him to update than his old site. Paul spends an hour or two a week maintaining it, as well.
For Paul, it’s well worth the time. Did you know people who volunteer regularly tend to be happier than people who don’t? That would seem to be anecdotally confirmed by Paul’s generally upbeat nature.
Volunteering has all kinds of benefits: new friends and connections, as well as improved confidence and social skills.
We wanted to have a picture of Jürgen juggling a soccer ball to go with this post, but he had knee surgery the day before we went downstairs to see him. Yes, Eugene Timbers now have an office downstairs in the Cawood building.
He was getting around pretty well, considering. But juggling was out of the question. He had these soccer balls on hand, though. If you look closely, you can see autographs: They were signed by the Portland Timbers, and they’re headed for a fundraising auction this winter – which you can read about. Just go to the website.
