How to Volunteer

Transposed from an older blog

Ok so if I'm going to do this blog thing I better find something suitably dull to write about. So I'm going to tell you about my day yesterday, coz I can't write about today yet as it hasn't really happened.

I volunteer at the Greenpeace office one day a week, usually Friday. This fits in with my job as I work from Sunday to Thursday. But yesterday coz there was some stuff I thought needed doing, and a meeting I wanted to go to, I juggled days off, to go and volunteer on Thursday.

Some notes about volunteering in the office, and how to get involved if you want to.

Lots of people contact GP wanting to volunteer, however a sizable amount of people seem to be after paid employment under the guise of volunteering. Sorry folks that’s not how it works. New volunteers are also a pain for campaigners & staff to manage. Like any new job the first couple of days you work there, you require lots of attention, and the person supervising you ends up spending there constructive working time helping you. Then after the first week you might end up contributing something positive to the job. Well volunteering is just like that, at one day a week, you are a bit useless for the first month, then you start being useful, then you get good at it and then everyone loves you. Hey it’s good to be loved. Many people do not last that first month, and unfortunately waste time.

Because of this ‘hump’ Greenpeace doesn’t use many volunteers. Frankly I think it should use lots more, I think there should be hordes of volunteers seizing any unmanned PC to go make stuff happen. I also think there should be a specific space for volunteers in the office with lots of PC’s close together and phone lines. It might be effective to have two evenings a week where volunteers can come and do stuff. But in any case the offices are too quiet and lots more people would LIVEN THINGS UP.

But when there is a need for a volunteer, usually someone known to GP gets the role. You can write to GP and fill out a form, but the odds are it’s going to end up in the bottom draw of a filing cabinet in HR. I know I’ve seen the files.

So if you do want to volunteer, get involved with your local London network and group. Do lots of campaigning. Go to the office as often as possible. Go down the pub after work with GP people, get drunk, talk office politics. Then figure out what you want to do, find the relevant person who you by now know and ask them if you can help them out.

So yesterday being a typical mish mash and mad panic went like this (next entry)