Vineyard Registration Reaches 10,000

Contributed By Chelsee Niebergall, Church News and Events

  • 20 May 2011

Article Highlights

  • Helping in the Vineyard reached the milestone of 10,000 registered volunteers four months after the website’s launch.
  • Vineyard administrators are continuing to add service projects to the website.

“It is like doing missionary work. I know the Church will use the resources that I helped develop to spread the gospel.” —Paul Urzagaste, Vineyard volunteer

Helping in the Vineyard, a website launched in January 2011, has reached a milestone of 10,000 registered volunteers.

Vineyard administrators had hoped to have 10,000 members registered by the end of 2011, but more people than expected have responded—and earlier than expected—to the invitation to help in the Lord’s work. Administrators’ new registration goal for the end of the year is 25,000.

The Vineyard is a website that helps connect members and friends of the Church to online service opportunities that will help the work of the Church move forward.

Anyone can register and offer his or her service. Those who are interested in participating first need to sign in with their LDS Account on vineyard.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. (Those who don’t have an LDS Account can create one on the site.) Volunteers then browse through service opportunities in the categories of Church multimedia, Church publications, family history, and translation and select activities that interest them. The activities are then saved to a personal “workspace.” Because there are no deadlines or time requirements, volunteers can work on their projects as little or as much as they’d like.

One of the most popular services has been image uploading and tagging, but Vineyard administrators hope to engage more people in translation work.

Joseph Jatip, Vineyard program manager, said another goal is to get Teachings of the Living Prophets, a seminary and institute manual, translated into 31 languages—some 3,000 pages of text.

“To do that, we need a lot of help,” said Brother Jatip.

Vineyard administrators plan to add more projects to the website in the future, including video editing.

The Vineyard establishes a worldwide community as a resource for completing large amounts of work in a short period of time. Much of this work is done online, with potentially thousands of people working on a single project simultaneously.

Paul Urzagaste, a native Bolivian who currently resides in Logan, Utah, USA, said that he enjoys serving at vineyard.ChurchofJesusChrist.org because what he does can help people around the world learn the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It is like doing missionary work. I know the Church will use the resources that I helped develop to spread the gospel,” Brother Urzagaste said.

Jennifer Goodman from Kona, Hawaii, USA, said that she decided to get involved with the Vineyard after listening to a general conference talk about giving service. The site is a good option for her because she can work as her schedule allows and still give meaningful service.

“It makes me feel like I can contribute more to the building up of the Church,” she said.

Visit vineyard.ChurchofJesusChrist.org to start volunteering.

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