to help others

With the click of a mouse on a Web page link, an Internet surfer can find almost anything. After spending his entire career working with computers, Harry Bennett understood the ease the Internet provided to those in search of information and wanted to help.

About five years ago, Bennett took his know how to the Montgomery County Volunteer Center and introduced the idea of setting up a Web site to get the center's message out so it could help others.

"I was looking for something to do with my skills and an opportunity to use them," said Bennett, 72, a retired director of data processing for the National Library of Medicine.

Bennett, a 25-year Montgomery Village resident, began volunteering with the center in 1995, when he offered his services as a photographer after seeing a commercial for the volunteer center on television requesting that people take pictures of community events and activities. More interested in his computer skills than photography skills, volunteer organizers sent Bennett to speak with workers at the center who were in need of someone with computer skills.

"We started to talk about how they could use computers at the volunteer center," Bennett said. "At the Library of Medicine, I had been a very early worker with the Internet -- what you could do with it, I was familiar with."

Bennett, who had worked at IBM for 14 years, had not created Web pages before working with the volunteer center.

At age 65, he studied about how to create Web sites, he said.

"When I had the chance to work at the volunteer center, it was the first chance I really had to apply what I had learned by reading and practicing."

Once Bennett knew how to do it, he turned around to give the skills to others.

"I had not had the opportunity to do public service or volunteer work before, or at least, I hadn't taken the opportunity," he said. "I thought this would be a chance to do that sort of thing."

Bennett and volunteer workers set up a four-year project to construct a Web page and newsletter. That was in 1996, and the Internet was still new and growing. Bennett said the volunteer center was one of the earlier organizations in the county with Internet access.

Bennett thought setting up a Web site would allow seniors and anyone else interested in learning about the volunteer center easy access to its activities.

Today, the volunteer center has an interactive Web site that Bennett developed. In addition, Bennett puts together a monthly newsletter on-line explaining the center's volunteer opportunities.

"I think [the Internet's] great," Bennett said. "The way it's grown, the way it's expanded and the things you can do with it open up entirely new avenues of doing things that you couldn't do before."

Bennett likes the accessibility and information the Internet provides. By working to develop the Web pages, it is his way of getting the message out to others about the volunteer center. Before the center had its own Web site, phone calls soliciting volunteers was the only way to get the word out.

When Bennett first started, he would spend a couple days working on the page, he said. Now, it only requires a few hours a week to update the page with new information.

Since learning how to write and develop Web pages, Bennett has also designed his church's Web page, which he continues to maintain, and has started teaching classes on the techniques to seniors at the Holiday Park Senior Center in Aspen Hill.

"There is so much people learn in life," Bennett said. "My thing is computers."

Bennett is happy helping the community center because through the access the Web site provides, it gets people out into the community, he said. The Internet is a way of communicating, Bennett said, and for seniors it provides them with a better link to community activities.

"It gets them active in the world around them," he said. "I think that's important for seniors."

Do you know someone that volunteers their time to make a difference in the Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village, Laytonsville, Washington Grove, Darnestown or Derwood communities? If so, drop a note to JoAnn Grbach at jgrbach@gazette.net or call 301-670-2066.