2018 – The year of the Volunteer Activist

2017 – What a year. The year of war, terror, fear, fear mongering, Trump, North Korea, anger and volunteering. I added volunteering because you just got to take something good from the year right? But wait up, how many people volunteered for the Trump campaign? Is this volunteering for good? There is a blog and a debate for the future. Even so, the words “low level volunteer” still echo in my mind.

I’ve been hanging around on this planet for almost 48 years now. I don’t think I’ve seen so much anger and divisiveness in my life. Everyone seems to be fighting. Black white. Rich poor. Arab Jew. Woman man. Religious atheist. Social media perpetuated this anger. You can’t read a news story on Facebook without reading the brawling in the comments section. Keyboard warriors have masses of courage.

You don’t see much compassion, love, forgiveness and tolerance on social media. You certainly don’t see much of this coming from our Governments. It’s enough to despair but I sense something is not quite right here.

Who benefits from us all fighting with each other? While we are all fighting are we simply distracted by what is really going on? Imagine if we paused the arguments put down our phones and devices and just had a look around us for a day.  Imagine if we just had a conversation about the growing divide between rich and poor and the disappearance of the middle class. Imagine if we saw refugees with our hearts instead of our minds and ignored the fear mongering driven by a government agenda supported by the press.

Who benefits from us all fighting with each other? While we are all fighting do we not notice that there is little difference between political parties? Kids will starve to death by the time we usually reach lunch time but we have our reality shows and dinner delivered on our apps to look forward to in the evening.

Who benefits from us all fighting with each other? Because above the noise of our arguments no one hears the cash registers ringing at the billions many of our governments spend on defence. And we won’t worry about that as long as we get a great New Year’s Eve fireworks display in major cities that costs millions upon millions. But that’s ok because the homeless get a free show too right?

Who benefits from us all fighting with each other? Because we get more time to go to the beaches due to the beautiful hot weather and those scientists are full of fake news.

Who benefits from us all fighting with each other? The answer is those who benefit from us all being distracted. And who are they? The status quo brigade. The elite. The powerful. The people who own you. Or like to think they do. Their biggest fear is the old adage “the people united will never be defeated”

Because united we find our humanity. United we see that we all breathe the same air and bleed the same colour. United there are no borders. United we seek equality and justice for all. United we know we produce enough resources on this earth to serve all. United we know there is cheaper cleaner energy.

And there is hope. In 2017 I’ve watched brave people around the globe take action for good. People volunteer to make a difference but are being choosier about where they volunteer. Activism is growing. I was once at a national conference where someone argued that activism and volunteerism were inherently different. I disagree. I believe the world will change for the good because of volunteer activists!

This year for the first time since the Iraq war I protested. Alerted by social media to the case of people who were being treated inhumanly, without compassion and with cruelty I decided to be on the right side of history and picked up my placard and sang my protest song. Because no more. Not in my name.

Here’s to the volunteer activist in 2018. But first, try and see all the distractions for what they really are.

Time for a Quality Mark in Volunteering because it matters!

https://www.volunteeringaustralia.org/policy-advocacy/national-standards-and-supporting-material/

The National Standards for Volunteer Involvement in Australia provide a sound framework for supporting the volunteer sector. The Standards are easy to follow and are adaptable to different organisation types and different forms of volunteering which reflect the diversity of this growing sector.

Direct benefits to organisations:

·         They provide good practice guidance and benchmarks to help organisations attract, manage and retain volunteers, and

·         Help manage risk and safety in their work with volunteers.

Direct benefits to volunteers:

·         They help improve the volunteer experience.

The National Standards for Volunteer Involvement (2015) are the intellectual property of Volunteering Australia. They are recognised within Australia as the best practice framework for volunteer involvement.

Additionally, Volunteering Australia will be developing a flexible, tiered voluntary certification, or ‘Quality Mark’ system to enable organisations to check how they are tracking in implementing the Standards.

This is great news for the volunteering sector and for the volunteer management profession. So many of our charity organisations rely on volunteers across the nation. But it is vital that they are being seen to do the right thing by volunteers and those who manage them.

People who may wish to volunteer should have guidance on how organisations value volunteers. In truth organisations that don’t value volunteering effort eventually run into strife anyway as volunteers vote with their feet if they are not treated well or “used” inappropriately.

Organisations that have the ability to resource Human resources and a plethora of other paid positions are doing volunteering a disservice if they engage volunteers but do not resource volunteer management. Volunteers do not come for free. I repeat volunteers do not come for free! Effective volunteer programs are adequately resourced with staff, training, development and recognition budgets.

A quality mark or best practice mark on volunteering standards will not be compulsory for organisations yet but it will push to the forefront those organisations that see the value of volunteering and effective volunteer management.

The Volunteer Management sector must get behind the National Standards as it advances our profession. Volunteers will get behind the National Standards as it goes to their rights and protection and all organisations with volunteers have a duty to implement these well researched industry standards!

Failure to do so may not have consequences as of yet. But if a quality mark is developed and an effective accreditation system put in place organisations that do not get on board will be left behind or volunteers and staff who are passionate about the mission they work for will demand to their leadership that their organisations have standards for volunteer involvement! Bring it on!