Volunteering

Last week was National Volunteer Week.  One group decided to have us fill out a "Why do you volunteer" poster.

I have always volunteered.  I started volunteering at a very early age.  In a sense my parents modelled this idea and impulse for volunteering activity, although I don't really recall their being terribly involved in volunteer organisations outside of the church.  But, nevertheless, volunteering was inculcated into me from a very early age.

I did do volunteer working for the church, but I also volunteered for a number of other organisations.  Some were related to the church.  I was on the board of the BC Area of Christian Camping International, and when I first became involved with the BC Youth Parliament, or Older Boys Parliament of BC, as it then was, it was at a time when it still had some tentative and tenuous links to its origin as a Christian boys organisation.

At one point, having built myself up quite a repertoire of volunteer work and positions, Physicians. I moved and lost all of them.  This was rather unfortunate for me.  I was very sad to to lose the positions, and the context, and even the work.  But, such is life. However, I continued volunteering in some capacity or other over time.  One of my volunteer activities was blood donations.  In Canada we don't get paid for blood donations And I gave blood quite extensively.  I have a relatively rare blood type, and so certain factors in my blood are useful to specific programs where they separated out those factors and and returned other components of my blood to me so that I could donate more often.  So, there are various and sundry ways of being involved in volunteering.

Volunteering can also help you, and benefit you, in a wide variety of ways. 

When I am doing career preparation presentations I always stress the importance of volunteering.  It was volunteering that got me a chance to get onto the Internet, over forty years ago, before the Internet was even *called* the Internet, when the Internet was accessible only to a very few.  I estimate that there were only a thousand people involved in the Internet at that point, rather than the billions that are now.

Volunteering teaches you many things.  There are the tasks that you are being asked to do, but there is also the important experience of getting along with other people in a Cooperative work situation.  Volunteer work is probably going to be different from your normal work.  And it's probably also going to be different from the work culture of your professional or working life.  As a professional, and as a consultant, I primarily work alone.  (I remember an article many years ago about everybody insisting that their jobs involved high-tech.  The author was making the point that not everybody could be involved in high-tech.  And so there had to be a definition and distinction.  His proposed distinction was that if your mother understood what you did, you didn't work in high-tech.  Not only did my mother *never,* ever understand what I did for a living, but most of my *bosses* didn't understand it either.  So, I worked alone.)  This is fine.  It's what professionals primarily do.  But it is a bit lonely.  So, working in a volunteer situation, on a crew with others, does make a nice change.

Much of my volunteer work is Community Policing (which is mostly about keeping people alive); and Emergency Support Services (which is mostly about keeping people alive); and the hospice society  (which, in my case, is mostly about comforting people who are grieving because their people have *not* been kept alive); so it's nice to go out with the trail crew (currently removing sword fern and salmonberry to keep it from encroaching on the trails), and, legitimately, kill something.

I'm not just involved in the churches (good thing), but also with the Sunshine Club (the "old folks" activities in town; I'm already on the Board), Lazy Ass Hikers, the Jesus Film Festival, Reconciliaction, and a variety of minor side projects, such as security seminars, arts walks/seminars, a speaker's bureau/club, a computer club, grief guys, an experimental CISSP seminar, grief bibliographies, and writing sermons.

You can learn activities, you can learn skills, you can learn cultures, you can learn an awful lot about life and work by doing volunteer work.  I always recommend it.  I always emphasise it to those trying to plan their careers and their life path.  Volunteer.  It's a great way to figure out what you like to do, what you *don't* like to do, what you are good at, what you *aren't* good at, and how well, you get along in different types of work environments.

I shouldn't sugar coat it: it can be difficult.  I'm facing a bit of burnout.  Don't believe the Hallmark movies: nobody comes to a small town, and particularly a mill town, unless they want to make a lot of money without too much effort.  Small towns sort of self-select for a lack of ambition and drive.  Here in Port Alberni, organisations and groups want paying members, but don't want to put in any effort into getting those members.  They don't want to produce pamphlets or easily accessible information that might explain *why* potential members might want to join (and how).  The groups don't put any effort to finding out or advertising their presence.  They want you to find them (and then pay for the privilege).

Volunteer work in Port Alberni is getting very tough.  I am having difficulty with some of the activities in many of the volunteer groups because many activities require multiple members to be involved, and it's hard to get other people to show up (or sign up) even when we have a fairly large crew of volunteers.

I am involved with a number of volunteer organisations in Port Alberni, and all of them seem to be on the verge of imploding.  Now, there are financial difficulties in the world (following the pandemic), and an awful lot of volunteer and charitable organisations are facing difficulties both with raising finances and with getting volunteers to put in work.  But it seems to be very much worse here in Port Alberni.  All of the groups that I'm working with can't get money, and are having trouble with their finances and budgets.  Funding grants from governments and other bodies are getting tighter.  But it's also true that it's getting really difficult to get volunteers to take on tasks.  I'm getting a pretty much constant barrage of email messages from pretty much all of the groups, begging for people to perform various activities.  Some of the duties I can take on, but I'm doing an awful lot of activities, and it's getting rather annoying as to how few of the other volunteers are willing to contribute to the activities.  Yes, there are people who prefer certain activities over others.  Yes, there are people who have preferred times that they will (or can) participate.  But, overall, very few people in the organisations are doing very much of anything.  Just simply knowing the number of calls that go out for specific activities; needed activities; *necessary* activities; activities that we should be doing as a matter of course; and seeing constant cries for help--well, it's annoying.  Not the calls for help.  But the fact the organisations *need* to put out those calls for help.  All of the organisations are in trouble, and the organisations are in trouble because nobody will put in much of any work.

(Port Alberni also has problems in that you cannot do *anything* any differently than it has always been done in the past.  Even if the needs have changed, even if the circumstances have changed, even if the situation has changed markedly and the activity needs to be changed or needs to be done in a new and different way, doing something new is a problem.  You have to do it in the same way that it has always been done.  It doesn't matter if the way that it has always been done, doesn't fit with the need.  [The truism that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity doesn't matter.]  The fact that this is the way we've always done it supersedes what actually needs to be done.  And if you find something that needs to be done, that hasn't been done before, Heaven help you.  There is absolutely no possible way to do that.)