Winning entries from the Do-it Facebook blogging competition.

All | Gordon | Nadia | Gabrielle | Alison | Niamh | Dan | Carolyn | Kath | Blog society

Wednesday Jun 15, 2011

The favourites

Blog Society was a competition (run by Do-it) looking for the most original, inspiring and passionate stories, blogs and reportage from the volunteering front line. Entrants were encouraged to use their blogging skills to inspire others about volunteering in order to be in with the chance of winning a Nintendo 3DS or Amazon Kindle. The following blogs are the winning entries from the competition.

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Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:23 PM )
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There's more to rainbows than rain and sunshine

This is taken from my blog http://onegirlandtheworld.blogspot.com/

How can there be more to rainbows than rain and sunshine? I mean duh its basic science! Everyone knows that when sunlight catches raindrops at the right angle (no not A right angle, THE right angle) a rainbow is made but I’m not talking about the rainbows you see in the sky. No, I mean the 5, 6 and 7 year old girls, the youngest members of the Girlguiding family and I’ll let you into a little secret…they’re my favourite section but don’t tell that to my Guide unit! Rainbows really are cuties. Did you know a 5 year old will tell you anything without you even asking…they’ll tell you their whole life story if you’ll only listen. Last weekend (whilst helping out at Rainbow sleepover) I learned all about one Rainbow’s dog and I could probably tell you his whole life story not to mention the Rainbow’s but that’s not what we’re here for. No, this post is about volunteering with Rainbows.

But maybe I’d better explain a bit more about what Rainbows is, I mean, what’s the point in me writing more if you guys have no idea what I’m going on about!! :P Well most of you have probably heard of Guides right? and perhaps even Brownies (no not the edible ones…I don’t think you’d want to eat an eight year old girl would you now…because that’s cannibalism…but whatever floats your boat. Please Note: Cannibalism is not endorsed in any way, shape or form by me). Perhaps if you’re from America you might know Rainbows as Daisy Scouts or from Canada as Sparks. In Ireland they’re called Ladybirds and in Hong Kong they’re known as Happy Bees but the idea is the same the whole world over and that is, I quote from Girlguiding UK:

“Being a Rainbow is all about learning, developing self-confidence, building friendships and, of course, having lots of fun!”

And I know that our Rainbows certainly do, take the other weekend for example; it was our annual Rainbow Sleepover almost 20 Rainbows in a hall for one night with more arriving the next day. Hectic is the first word that springs to my mind and hectic it was but more importantly ENJOYABLE!! I spent my Saturday building LEGO cars with small children, yes LEGO cars with multiple parts, no make that 30+ parts and 5 and 6 year olds. But at the end of the day we only lost the arm of one driver and the headlight off one car. I know its not how many people would choose to spend their Saturday but its how I chose to spend mine,building cars and singing songs, all in between making frantic dashes to the florists to get pink balloons filled with helium because you can’t send one Rainbow home without a balloon!

There is reason behind my madness (because sometimes it feels like I really must be mad to do what I do) because at the end of the sleepover, whilst waiting for her parents to come and collect her one little Rainbow said to me that she had really enjoyed herself and would definitely come next year and that next year she would stay the night! It’s the little things like that that make volunteering with the rainbows worthwhile, well that and being recognised in TESCO’s by them because it make me feel like I’m famous!

So in the spirit of Rainbows, Look, Laugh, Love, Learn. We’ve had lots of fun. Bye, bye Rainbows (and you lot reading this :P ). Sleep well everyone!
That’s all for today folk!
Niamh
xxxxx

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:17 PM )
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One small step to making the world a nicer place

Someone once said to me that there is no selfless act. I pondered on this for a while and didn’t want to really agree with it being true. Of course some of just did things for others, but oh yeah, by doing that people think you are great and you in turn feel really good about yourself so you are getting something out of it. There’s a great episode of Friends where Phoebe ponders the very same thought and sets herself on a mission to do the ultimate selfless act.

It never happens.

So if you want to feel great about yourself but also feel like you are doing something selfless then volunteer work is the way to go.

Once upon a time we all knew who our neighbours were, we all looked out for each other and we all nipped round to someone’s house to borrow a cup of sugar or a power tool. Now, we wouldn’t even know who our neighbours are to know who we could borrow something from.

If you volunteered you can overcome some of these issues.

We are all being told about environmental issues or how we are all too focussed on money and image and not on the really important things in life.

Again by volunteering you can help solve these issues.

Still not convinced?

Let me explain a little further.

Land, especially in London is become scarce and many people don’t have garden space. It would also help with money and the environment if we could all grow some of our own vegetables and of course we’d feel good about ourselves if we did. There are schemes now set up where you can volunteer to help someone who doesn’t like gardening or for some reason is unable to. Well you can go and help them maintain their garden and in return you get to use some of their garden space for your own use.

Many of us are making friends online. Working from home. Studying at home. What better excuse to get out of the house than to volunteer to help older people with their shopping, to help out on food runs for homeless people. This will make you feel good about yourself, get you meeting more people and help worthy people.

There are so many charities having any government money allocated to them cut, all these worthy causes that are struggling. You could volunteer to do a car boot sale or a fun run to help them out. This not only helps you to get rid of any of your unwanted goods but you could get fit in the process. Recycling goods is a great way to help environmentally as well.

Volunteering makes you feel good, it opens up a whole social circle to you and can provide someone with much needed contact to the outside world, can help with environmental issues, can refocus some of your own worries and is just one way you can help to make a small difference to the world. The real beautiful thing is that this is one of the few things in life where you won’t be judged by your size, your face or your age, this is one of the things in this world that has no isms and is truly welcoming to all.

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:15 PM )
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Volunteering helps me as much as it helps others

I had expected to have a whale of a time when I started university in 2004, but to my surprise it wasn’t the hedonistic experience I’d hoped for, but one of loneliness, home-sickness, stress and hard work. In my second year of university I began volunteering at a local primary school on Thursday afternoons to help teach practical science to pupils in year 4. We raced cars down slopes to learn about speed, acceleration, forces, friction and drag, we went pond-dipping to learn about wildlife, and looked at our creatures under microscopes. I had fun. I forgot about the unhappiness in the rest of my life and was reminded why I decided to go to university- to study science, which is so exciting and fascinating. It was wonderful to be able to share my enthusiasm with the inquisitive minds in the class and to discuss and explore ideas with people with such a different point of view from my own. It was refreshing to escape the university ‘bubble’ and get back to real life, to get a little perspective on things.

Since moving to Leeds to pursue my scientific career I have continued volunteering, and have for the past few years worked as a volunteer tutor at an after-school class for children in need of extra help with their studies. This work is interesting and varied and I have worked with children of varying ages, from 7 to 17, from different backgrounds with different interests and abilities. I have never encountered a pupil that I didn’t enjoy working with. Sometimes it is hard work, especially when working with large groups, when everyone is tired after a long day at school or at work, or when we have to prepare for exams. But the sense of achievement is huge when you help someone to understand something which they had previously found confusing, helped them develop a skill in a particular area, or introduced them to something new and exciting which is interesting to them. Young people are fun to be around, they are interesting and passionate and honest and funny and the vast majority of them are hard-working and diligent when given the right support and encouragement. I am now on the board of trustees for the organisation which I volunteer with, and am involved as much as I can be in the running of the scheme. I hope that the scheme continues to flourish and that my blog encourages other people to get involved in volunteering, it’s brilliant!

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:14 PM )
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Volunteering and volcanoes

In June 2010, I attended a big flower show – BBC Gardeners’ World Live in Birmingham, like I do every year. I like plants! But this time, I decided that looking at all the show gardens wasn’t enough, I wanted to create one next time. Well, I do like plants.

Charities or community groups often create gardens at flower shows. Some as a way to demonstrate a particular idea, about living a green lifestyle, or encouraging birds to the garden, or conserving a habitat. Sometimes, it’s quite metaphorical – gardens symbolising a recovery from a disease, say, with twisty paths and spiky things. It’s dead arty. Sometimes, it’s just a way to get their name seen by 100,000 visitors and a mention on the BBC.

I volunteer with a group who do gardening, wildlife and craft projects, so a show garden could help us demonstrate all sorts of ideas, non obscure metaphorial ones! It could share ideas about attracting wildlife, gardening in an eco-friendly way or growing native plants. It could inspire more people to volunteer on community gardening projects, and improve their local green spaces too. And it would also be a great way to show what volunteers can achieve.

That day, I decided my group were DEFINITELY creating a show garden at the next show. It was an ambitious plan; they’re quite tricky, are show gardens. And very different to creating a real garden. It has to look great immediately. And we’d need more funding, and we’d be working over 100 miles away from home.

And I was badly agoraphobic.

I had been trying to recover; in May 2010 I tried to go on holiday. Tried and failed. I ended up lying on my sofa having a panic attack the morning I was due to fly, but the holiday got cancelled anyway, due to the Eyjafjallajökull. I was still devastated though, and my brother was still greatly amused, and saw it as a chance to practise his A Team impressions: “I ain’t getting on no plane, fool!”

But the failed holiday made me angry, and more determined to become un-agoraphobic.

And now I felt lucky. How often does an ashcloud close an airport just for you?

As I recovered, I needed a goal, and a show garden with my volunteering group would be perfect. We talked about it, and decided we all definitely wanted to create one. But first, we needed money; we thought we might need about £5,000, maybe a little less. We looked at the funding available and realised that £2,500 might be the maximum we’d be able to get. So we suddenly decided we could DEFINITELY do it on £2,500! We actually got £3,500.

Next, we needed a design. We had a meeting, and decided we wanted to make some unusual cubic mosaic-covered seats. We wanted silver birch trees. We wanted various purple and magenta flowered native plants, and bold green ferns and grasses. EVERYONE wanted a pond, well, except me, I was still too excited about ferns. We all knew what we wanted, but we couldn’t come up with a layout to put everything in.

We pondered it a while. Up until 2 hours before the closing date for entries on the 6th December, I tried to fit all the ideas into one design. I managed it! I painted a lovely picture of it to send to the RHS along with our plans and application forms, I felt like Alan Titchmarsh.

And I did get less agoraphobic. Just before I sent our design in, I managed to go on the holiday, to Iceland! I saw Eyjafjallajökull as we drove past one day on an excursion. It made me smile. And I bought my brother a souvenir – an ‘I survived Iceland’ fridge magnet. His BA Baracus impressions still haven’t stopped though.

After the amazing holiday in another country, and the endless A Team quotes, a week in Birmingham didn’t seem all that tricky!

We found out we’d definitely got a plot in February this year, and got some feedback on our design. The RHS loved our choice of plants, and recommended we got rid of the pond. I was happy with that!

So we got to work, ordering plants and designing mosaics, and filling in even more forms. We’d dug up lots of seedlings from our gardens, hoping we could grow them on for the show garden. We weren’t sure it would work though. But they grew amazingly, and we ended up with greenhouses and patios full of wild strawberries, grasses, foxgloves, Geraniums, red campions, ragged robins and Jacob’s ladders we’d grown.

Ferns are slower to propagate though, so we had to buy them. And then, a week and a day before we were due to start building the garden, we visited a fern nursery to find our order of 50 huge plants of 4 different evergreen native ferns no longer existed, and we were being offered 40 smaller, scabbier plants of just one of the species. We turned them down, and suddenly needed some ferns.

I have lots of ferns in my garden (a garden centre once gave me loads for free!), so we decided to dig them up. Now we had even more of our show plants sat in pots on the patio. We managed to buy some extra ones too, so our fern catastrophe was over!

But it wasn’t our only catastrophe! We had intended to use some dogwoods we’d grown, but we realised their leaves weren’t big enough. So we had to buy some, and buying fairly big shrubs can be difficult, and expensive! But we found some, at the last minute. I love doing things at the last minute! The mosaic seating got grouted at the last minute, and the cushions for them haven’t even been sewn yet, with only a week to go. But sewing’s fairly simple, and I can do it any time of day, while wearing my pyjamas if I wish. I can’t go to a garden centre in my pyjamas.

The third catastrophe occured the day before we were due to start building the garden. We found out that our plot had been laid out the wrong way. We’d asked someone to excavate the garden for us, because the stony soil needs to be dug with a mini-digger, and they can’t be driven without a license, however much some of our volunteers might want a go! So our garden had been excavated the wrong way, and the 3 large holes for the silver birch trees which were meant to be at the back of the garden were actually down the left hand side, so it would look very lopsided.

My dad went down to Birmingham to draw it out the right way yesterday – he’s a civil engineer and very precise with a can of spraypaint – and it has now been re-dug. The rest of the volunteers have gone down as planned today. They are planting silver birch, laying turf, laying an edge of reclaimed block paving around a bed and filling beds with topsoil. I’m not going down until Saturday, when there will be lots of ferns to plant. I assume there have been no more catastrophes though, I haven’t had a frantic phonecall. And our weekend of planting ferns and flowery things can’t go wrong!

In a week the garden gets judged, and then the day after the show opens to visitors, 100,000 of them! Then all we have to do is show off our lovely garden, and try and convince more people to volunteer! Unless we don’t win a nice shiny medal, then I might try and hide amongst the ferns.

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:10 PM )
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For my Grandmother

On Friday 17th May, after my rather unimportant Critical Thinking exam, I turned up at the Tesco Store in Ilkeston. At 17 years of age, still very shy and nervous, I pestered my dad to wander into the store with me to look for Jane Wheatley. Of course, it didn’t take us very long as there she was, stood at the front of the store; blue t-shirt; blue sash; holding the blue bucket. She had been there since 9am collecting for the Alzheimer’s Society. Now it was my turn.

After signing me in and passing on the sash and bucket, I took my place at the front of the store, surrounded by many of the decorative blue posters. I have to admit, I felt great pride in what I was doing. When I got cold and I shivered, I reminded myself why I was there.

My grandma, now well into her 70s, was diagnosed with Alzhiemers over 2 years ago. Nobody knew that she was ill. It all started off when her clothes began to go ‘missing’. She believed people were breaking into her house, stealing old knickers, and it only got worse. Jewellery began to go missing, money began to go missing, keys were going missing. In the beginning many of us believed her, espiecially me, but after my Grandad changed the locks, it only got more and more peculiar…

My Grandma is now very ill. She is loosing most of her speech, and day dreams a lot of the time. She doesn’t even want to eat.

I love my Grandma, she may have forgotten me but I will never forget her.
Volunteering for the Alzheimer’s Society gave me the chance to do something for her.

<3

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:07 PM )
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Giving a spit

When Charles Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit in 1844, he used a phrase which was to become one of the most recognisable idioms in the English Language; “Charity begins at home”. These four words have shaped the way many people perceive charity, despite undeniably being the antithesis of what charity truly is.

In 2009 I left home to pursue a degree in medicine. I had never really volunteered in the charitable sense, I had briefly lived in Kenya two years before, seen how people lived, helped out in a medical clinic and screened people for diabetes. These experiences definitely helped make a difference, though only to my CV.

When I began university I decided to do something I had meant to do for several years. I joined the bone marrow register. I had always intended to get round to it ‘at some point’, but in all honesty, never really tried that hard to actually get out and do it. Since that date in November 2009 I have had more involvement with charity than in than my 23 years combined. Following signing up to the Anthony Nolan Register I trained as a counsellor, volunteering for our local student-led branch of Marrow at clinics, discussing with potential donors the implications of joining. In my second year I took over the role of organising these clinics where people could take 20 minutes out of their day to join the donor list by giving a small saliva sample.

Since I became involved with Marrow at university, our branch has raised over £10,000 and recruited over 160 potential life-saving donors to the Anthony Nolan Trusts bone marrow register. During this time I have had the privilege to meet some of the most inspirational people I am ever likely to meet. From the parents of four children who have all undergone bone marrow transplants before the age of ten, to Oliver Rofix, a man scarcely older than myself, who was diagnosed with leukemia six years ago, and following a successful bone marrow transplant is currently sailing round the UK to raise money and awareness for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

It has been at times exhausting, at others emotionally draining, but always worthwhile. From fundraising efforts of cake sales and pyjama days, to naked calendars and an infamous Full Monty night, to meeting people whose lives have been shattered by cancer, and rebuilt by the Anthony Nolan Trust and the kindness of strangers. I have laughed, cried, and laughed till I cried. I have seen frailty turn to strength, determination turn to success, I have seen more of my peers than I ever thought necessary, but most of all I have seen ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Standing up, making a difference, and changing the lives of others for good.

And that for me is the true essence of charity; people stepping out and sharing their experiences and time, teaching, showing, proving that anyone can step up and make a difference; giving time, giving money, giving your experiences to others, even something as simple as giving a spit.

So next time someone knowingly looks at you and tells you that charity begins at home, challenge them to open their front door, step outside and take a look at the world – and change it.

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:05 PM )
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Life changing experiences

Everybody wants to experience something significant in their life. Something they can always hold in their heart, and eventually pass it on to others. I guess having memories that could potentially last forever is something I value deeply. In July of 2009, I took one of the most amazing trips of my life to Kenya, and I believe what I saw not only pushed me on to continuously volunteering, but made me love the whole concept of volunteering even more. I've always been the type of person to step in and help. I take joy in seeing positive changes as they are always emotionally rewarding. When I went to Kenya, I helped volunteer on a community service programme. The impact that this had on me was huge, I was able to teach a class simple things like the alphabet, and give out little gifts as rewards. Seeing their faces light up was just magical. I transferred childhood games and activities I had grown up with in London, to those children in Kenya. At the end of the day, there were tears all round and a strong bond formed between all of us which I would never forget. I was awarded a certificate for "outstanding service to the development of disadvantaged children and families in St. Philip's Parish".

Due to the impact this had on me, it spurred me on to take up a similar form of work experience in London. I currently volunteer at Salisbury world, which is a club for asylum seekers and refugees and I thoroughly enjoy working there. I am able to teach the children, play with them, and watch them grow. This is one of the key things I love about volunteering.

Aside from this, volunteering allows for the formation of new friends and the learning of life changing skills, hence me deciding to become a qualified St John ambulance first-aider. This way I learn basic first aid, and can meet a variety of different people from many different backgrounds of different ages.

This is only a portion of my volunteer work and I completely love it, to me it an amazing experience that makes the several hours of my day even more special.

Thank you for reading :)

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:03 PM )
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It's nice to be appreciated by one so young

Whilst volunteering for Activenture (outdoor pursuits for disabled 8 – 18 yr olds) I worked with Adam who is 9 yrs old. Adam has Aspergers and at times found him to be challenging to say the least, however he was a nice chap and we had some good conversations, when he wasn’t running off. At the end of the weekend after waking on the Sunday morning he presented me with a piece of paper which read. To Gordon thank you for helping me out this weekend I will miss you, from Adam. PS Hope our lives cross again. PS turn over. on the other side was a drawing and another message saying I will miss you. We as volunteers do not get paid but Adams note of appreciation was touching and payment enough. Activenture is a fantastic experience for all and if you want to be a part of it Email. di@hindleap.com or look it up through this website.

Posted by BlogSociety ( 3:01 PM )
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