A Year to Volunteer is a volunteer organization whose crew includes RVers from around the country. Their aim is to help improve parks and other programs that benefit communities.

The group, whose goal is to do a project in all 50 states, have done projects in state parks across the nation. The volunteer crew recently finished a project at Cane Creek State Park, where they stayed for two weeks helping with various tasks including repairing and replacing storm-damaged bridges on the park’s trail.   

“I’m genuinely delighted to welcome A Year to Volunteer for their inaugural visit to Arkansas,” said Matt Manos, park superintendent at Cane Creek State Park and Arkansas Post Museum State Park. “Their enthusiasm to dive in and assist with the storm-damaged bridges along our trails, particularly the cherished 15.5-mile Cane Creek Lake Trail, promises to be a monumental lift. With our park’s rich tradition of partnering with volunteer groups like the Boy Scouts, collaborating with this talented team feels like a seamless and exciting fit.”

The storm damage at Cane Creek State Park stemmed from a double impact event that hit the park in 2023. “First, a seven-inch rainfall event shifted six bridges off their foundations along our trails,” said Manos. “Shortly after, a severe ice storm brought down 270 trees across the trail system, causing additional damage to some of those bridges. Since then, our dedicated three-person park staff has worked diligently to address the destruction, successfully replacing three of the six affected bridges. However, this has been a gradual process, as our team balances these repairs with their regular park maintenance duties.”

Manos said the trail had been impacted since early 2023, with the remaining three bridges posing a particular challenge due to their remote locations. To accelerate progress, they brought in specialized equipment and a heavy equipment operator to transport materials to these sites. A Year to Volunteer, which is known for their restoration work in other park systems, collaborated with Cane Creek State Park staff to help tackle the remaining repairs.

“We’re incredibly honored to have A Year to Volunteer join us at Cane Creek State Park,” said Manos. “Their reputation for exceptional builds and repairs in other park systems brings a tremendous boost to our efforts. Beyond their practical contributions, this collaboration offers our team a chance to learn from their expertise and strengthens our ability to maintain the park’s trails. It’s a privilege to work alongside such a skilled group, and we’re excited about the lasting impact this partnership will have on our park and its visitors.”

During the group’s time at Cane Creek State Park, they helped complete the needed work on the park’s storm damaged bridges ( they repaired Bridge 27 and Bridge 28 and built Bridge 26 and Bridge 35) and the Cane Creek Lake Trail is now completely open. Along with this, the group also built five picnic tables, painted direction signs, campground posts, bathroom doors and entrance sign posts, replaced fire rings, cleared and blazed trails, helped pick up 43 bags of trash along five miles of park road frontage, demoed three damaged replaced bridges, treated ant hills, and helped work on the park entrance sign.  

 A Year to Volunteer, which was awarded the National Association of State Park Directors President’s Award in 2022, was founded by Phil and Shar Roos in early 2020. Phil had retired from a long career with the Navy and Shar from a career in insurance and finance. Once retired they wanted to travel, but wanted to do so with a purpose. And thus the concept for the volunteer organization was born. 

The initial aim was to take a year and volunteer in each state, 50 states, 52 weeks and call it A Year to Volunteer, which is how the name was created. But then this morphed into volunteering for a total of at least 365 work days ( which they have already surpassed) or 50 states, whichever comes last.

The group works in a compressed time frame and very quickly. They find a park that needs help with a project, get a volunteer team and two-week time frame together, and then find a parking area for their volunteers to park their RVs at during the project. They don’t require campsites or hookups where they stay, typically boondocking or such. 

Phil mentioned they’ve done work in other areas like regional and city parks but usually focus on state parks because they are often overused and understaffed. “They don’t have enough time, money or people to get the stuff done that people use,” he said. “And we are RVers and we use the heck out of these parks so we thought this was a great way to give back to the community and make things better.” 

Those that volunteer with the organization usually have a variety of skills for the work at hand. “They pretty much come with their own skills,” said Shar Roos. “We don’t like anybody to learn on big equipment or chainsaws or anything like that but we teach people painting, sometimes they will be buddied up with someone who has better skills and so they will teach them how to use an impact driver or something like that. But all in all most people come with their own set of skills and we usually say we want one thing from our people, we just want a ‘how can I help attitude’ and we’ll find something for you to do.”

Being an RVer in general is also a benefit. “You have to have some level of skill to be an RVer because things always break when you are on the road,” said Shar Roos. “So you have to learn how to fix and maintain things because you could be stuck somewhere that there is nobody around that can get to you. Or your RV broke and you can’t get to a repair shop. So you have to learn how to do those things on your own.”  

Shar mentioned they’ve had projects where it was just painting, and they’ve had other projects that were just trail building. “So this [project] is great because we like diversity,” she said. “We’ve got some painting, we’ve got some trails, we’ve got some bridge building, we’ve got the trash pickup, so lots of different things are getting done.”

The amount of volunteers needed for a project depends on the project. They typically get repeat volunteers and for this project the number included 11 repeaters and four newbies. 

While in Arkansas the crew also did work at Arkansas Post Museum State Park. While there they painted benches and entrance sign posts, hauled away wood benches and tables, replaced a storm door on the museum, pressure washed the Main House, repaired broken doors, repaired rafter beams, replaced a wheelchair ramp and more. 

The work A Year To Volunteer has done around the country has ranged from routine maintenance to big legacy projects. They've remodeled buildings, built fences, cleared trails, built a riverside boardwalk, built an observation deck, built a 15-site campground and more. Leading up to the Cane Creek State Park project the organization had logged 52,606 volunteer hours in 27 states and over 41 projects. They are aiming to have 35 states by the end of the year and were at 28 states with Arkansas.

“And then we will go from there and see what else we can do,” said Phil Roos. “It’s been a lot of fun. It’s a lot of work but it’s been super rewarding.” 

Along with working on projects in state parks, the Roos also enjoy them. "When we first got in our RV the very first place we went to was Picacho Peak State Park and that is in Arizona where we are from,” said Shar Roos. “That was our first solo trip on our own as RVers.” The Roos eventually had a full circle moment with this same state park as they eventually ended up doing a project there as part of their A Year to Volunteer journey.  

A set of five core values is at the heart of how A Year to Volunteer operates. They want to make a positive impact, not negatively impact the park’s revenue, make it easy on park staff, get in and get out, and have fun. 

“The volunteers are amazing,” said Phil Roos. “I think what we did is we tapped into a resource of people who really want to give back and help in a different way.”

Cane Creek State Park is located at 50 State Park Road near Star City. From Star City go a few miles east on AR 293 to the park. For more details about Cane Creek State Park visit arkansasstateparks.com/parks/cane-creek-state-park. For more details about A Year to Volunteer visit ayeartovolunteer.com.