by Louise Sutherland
Volunteering has been hugely influential in my life. Volunteering enabled me to get into the career I wanted and what I’ve learned and seen while volunteering has shaped the way I think about the world.
My first volunteering was motivated from my need to gain work experience whilst doing a degree. I enjoyed helping the RSPB, BTCV and Ryton Organic gardens on short term placements during the holidays. Volunteering has even evolved into working holidays, I would definitely recommend the RSPB or BTCV working holidays if you want a cheap holiday where you can be active helping wildlife! Their websites have more information: http://www2.btcv.org.uk/display/holidays or email the RSPB volunteers [at] rspb [dot] org [dot] uk or check their website http://www.rspb.org.uk
I got involved with the RSPCA and trained as a ‘home checker’ and got involved with my local branch. This was more rewarding because it was longer term; I got to know people, was involved in decision-making and felt like a valuable part of the team. It was a commitment but it was flexible, I did what I could, when I could. Lots of animal charities need volunteers to foster animals short term until they can be re-homed. Dogs for the deaf http://www.hearingdogs.org.uk/ or seeing dogs http://www.gdba.org.uk/ and dogs for the disabled http://www.dogsforthedisabled.org/ all go to temporary foster home till they are old enough to go to their formal training. If you would love to have a dog but can’t commit to one because its so long term, this could be the ideal solution.
The most life changing volunteering I did was with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). This was a six month program where myself and a team of young folk from all over the UK, were sent over to Ghana to meet and work with a group of young folk from all over Ghana. We spent two days getting to know each other, then we were paired up and sent to the community in Ghana where we would be living and working for the next three months. We worked in a clinic for people whose HIV has progressed into AIDS. AIDS carries a huge stigma in Ghana and all of the people at the clinic had been cast out of their villages and many had been abandoned by their families because of their disease. They now lived at the hospital on ‘wards’ which were like villages – rows of mud built roundhouses where the people lived in one simple room until they died. We dug a dam for the clinic so it could hold enough water to see it through the dry season. Each day we did the rounds with the inspiring doctor who had set up the clinic, and gave massage and minor physiotherapy to the patients. Talking to these people each day, massaging and moving their frail bodies, these people who knew they were dying and had lived with their disease without the retroviral drugs that ease the suffering of many HIV patients in the rich fraction of the world, permanently changed my perception of life. These people who raised a smile when we arrived and lifted their hands into a prayer posture, calling us angels, opened me to a world I never knew existed. In the afternoons a few of us choose to also work in an orphanage. Few of the children there were actually orphans – some of them were handicapped and so had been abandoned, some were left there after their mother had died, the father coming to collect them when they were seven years old, because at seven they were old enough to start work.
Volunteering overseas changed me, I now understand my own needs and wants in relation to people who have nothing, whose lives offer them no choices, no opportunities and no hope. After living and working in places where these situations are common, I can’t deny the truth about the misery of the lives many people live, I know how much better their lives could be. Denial is not an option and there is no comfort in avoidance or distraction. I can still feel them. Volunteering created a need in me to understand the causes of poverty and to do something about them. Websites like DFID http://www.dfid.gov.uk/ help me understand about why poverty exists and keep up to date with the developments and changes. I did an MSc in Environment and Development to deepen my understanding and now I know what we can all do about poverty. It is not an impossible problem – its one that each one of us is responsible for creating and perpetuating. In the words of Bob Geldof: “It whispers through us through the unfair trade filling supermarket shelves and the exploited raw materials in our petrol stations.” We are all supporting poverty through what we buy and where we invest our money, and each of us can change it if we care enough to act. I hope that this series of articles will show you what you can change and inspire you to act.
My volunteering experience was part of the Millennium Volunteers program, it is still running and is open to anyone under 25. Apply via the VSO website (http://www.vso.org.uk). VSO provides a small ‘in country allowance’, pay for your flights and insurance and set up the work placements for you, in return you fundraise a small amount for them (typically £500) and work overseas. The Millennium Volunteers program is unusual in being an exchange program, so as well as working for three months in Ghana, the group of Ghanaian and UK participants worked in the UK for a UK community. The cross cultural learning this enabled was hugely valuable, but it was the work in Ghana that shaped me. I would recommend it to anyone – Go, see what you can achieve and do something you never thought you could. You will always remember and never regret it.
