Do you volunteer? If so, why?
(The snow pictures are below...and we'll post more on Tuesday...but in the meantime)...on iPM, we're wondering if you're thinking about doing voluntary work? Perhaps instead of finding a paid job? The charity CSV (Community Services Volunteers) say they received 44% more applications to their full-time volunteering programme last month.
But evidence in the past shows that unemployed people volunteer slightly less than those in paid employment. Will the recession make us more or less likely to volunteer our time?
Are you a long-term volunteer or about to embark on your first ever voluntary job? Please click here.
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I have been recruiting volunteers over a period of fifteen years. Back in the mid-nineties most of my volunteers were over 50, nearing or in retirement and mainly women. Now most new volunteers are in their twenties or thirties and either students wanting to enhance their study/career prospects or mothers wanting to return to the world of work. I hardly have any volunteers aged 60 or over.
Those looking for paid work who are keen to learn soon reap the benfits of giving their time and enthusiasm. Once I have trained them they give me on average 3 to 6 months service then they are quickly snapped up by new employers. It pays to volunteer!
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The problem with volunteering is that the pay is awful. Ho ho ho.
Many careers require you to get a bit of volunteering in before you can get a traineeship. Archivists often do a fair bit of voluntary work, as do trainee teachers, librarians, and (cough, spit) wannabe lawyers and journalists. so there is sometimes a selfish element behind it all. Or does that count as work experience? Not sure.
'I'm Eddie Mair - and you know the saying 'no news is good news?' -IT'S B*LLS'
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"Any work experience that you do whether paid or not adds to your wealth of experience".
Brownies and Cubs are the first to learn this (Youth organisations building better people who enjoy every minute of it all - eventually.
Job satisfaction - and there is very little of it when money is the only priority - is vitally important to the well being of any person and reduces stress. In making someone else's life better in any way gives you the greatest job satisfaction of all and the rewards both in the short and long term far outweigh that of money spent on something you didn't need or someone else didn't need.
After various voluntary work in spare time or as a temporary measure you are well equipped with abilities that those that stay at home watching television to get well paid useful work and you are much fitter and resilient with a broader outlook on life and far more understanding of it and others.
If you cannot do menial tasks then you are in no position to know whether your workforce is doing them properly when you have to be responsible for them being done by others in your employment or how they feel about the job that they have to do.
"Don't ask anyone to do anything that you are not prepared to do yourself" and
"you cannot give orders properly until you know how to take them yourself first".
These were always the Golden Rules in Life that I learnt.
"People can survive without money but money cannot survive without people".
Now where are your priorities?
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I have been volunteering with the local police for 3 years now. I'm from the USA and decided I needed to give something back to my new country. I'm unable to deal with sad stories, tears, blood, hurt children etc. I felt this was a good way to do it. I help new recruits to practice interviews, searches etc. It's great fun and I am helping out. I also get to see the inner workings of the police and it is NOT like THE BILL. HA.
Bryan
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