A recent conversation got me thinking about the reasons we volunteer. Are we serving an organization or are we serving the organization’s client base? Who was there first? What matters most to me?
One of my earliest volunteer experiences took place when I was about 13. Mrs. M. was looking for helpers to collect donations for the local humane society. We were given trays of pins and a donation tin so that we could go door-to-door collecting money from householders in exchange for a lapel pin. Of course we did it for the animals not for Mrs. M. and, in my case, we were collecting for the dogs. This was around the time our family adopted George, a loveable American cocker puppy, from the same humane society I was helping. It’s never too early to teach about the money that’s required to help those strays and rescue animals.
Last summer I volunteered at a dragon boat festival. My specific role was helping paddlers in and out of boats and, as a dragon boat paddler, I know that dragon boat festivals are entirely dependent on the volunteers who offer their time. The whole point of the sport is to be in the boat and race. No volunteers, no races.
My reason for going to Paris as a volunteer at the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games was not to serve the International Olympic Committee. I explained in my interview that as a now-and-then athlete I understood the concept of training to compete in your sport. The ultimate dream of every athlete is to win the race, beat the opponents and be the best. Dream the Olympic dream. I volunteered so that the best of the best athletes could have that opportunity to go for gold. There are 45,000 volunteers in Paris between the Olympics and Paralympics and the events could not happen without us. My mind is not on the IOC when I don my uniform.
I spent the past two winters teaching English to refugee youth in Athens at the Habibi Center, an organization which wouldn’t exist without the students it serves. I volunteered my skills so that young people were able to access a bare minimum of education that had already been denied them because of their refugee status. Some students had never attended school at all in their countries of origin because civil life had ceased to function due to political upheaval usually caused by war. The students were the reason I was there.
While I was writing this post my son and I were discussing different volunteer experiences and I mentioned that not too long after raising money for the humane society I got involved in my first election campaign where, as a volunteer, I stuffed envelopes and canvassed inner city neighbourhoods in downtown Toronto on behalf of the candidate, who happened to have a dishy son about my age. And there’s the exception to serving the greater good through volunteering observed my son: “young adults offer their time as political volunteers on election campaigns either to further their own political goals or bag an eligible significant other.” So much for pondering altruism on a Sunday afternoon. I'm a fake.
Organizations rely on a volunteer base to give life to the activity they represent. Once formed, the organization identifies its goals, establishes what it has to do in order to achieve those goals and then sets about recruiting the volunteer staff whose skills and knowledge will best serve the beneficiaries/clients of the organization…the puppies and the kittens, the paddlers, the Olympic athletes, the students…the ones that matter.
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