Let's face it, most people who volunteer are passionate about helping people - but for some influencing social change is also important. Volunteering for a campaigning organisation allows volunteers to help make things happen for large charities. Find out what the grass roots activists get up to here.

All | Helen | Rachael | Carolynn | Moira

Wednesday Dec 06, 2006

My first protest..

Just a quick blog to keep on top of recent events.

Firstly I must say how proud I am of how well our Fundraising Club night at Fabric went off! In the end I didn't attend because the club had a but of a strict insurance policy in regard to under 18's, however, I have been reliably informed that the night went off without a hitch with plenty of enthusiastic new supporters signing up. It looks like an absolutely stunning night from the pictures too.. there are plenty of those and a proper report here.

We have also been building for an event coming up this weekend. The BNP have called a protest on Saturday in our local group's area, so we have called a counter protest on the same day, in the same location a few hours earlier.. I have never really participated in anything like this before and am quite apprehensive.. The only times I have ever seen any type of protest illustrated in the media it's been for negative reasons and I'm not really sure what it's going to involve. It will of course be completely peaceful (on our part at least) and the aim is simply to show an objection to the BNP's activity in our area, and not to physically interfere with their activities at all. We spent quite a while on publicising it on Saturday, leafleting the town centre. Were expecting a pretty large turnout with a lot of groups coming in from surrounding areas to show their support and hopefully many locals too. We've actually been informed that the BNP will have about 60 supporters at most and we'll have significantly more – not bad considering we only found out and started organising it about 2 weeks ago! I'll let you know how it goes...

Posted by Carolynn ( 8:49 PM )
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Wednesday Nov 01, 2006

Warning: This is going to be a LONG post.

Phew! It's been a long time since I wrote anything here! Once again, due an unfortunate turn of events I have been unable to keep this up to date, my computer was rather.. incapacitated and whatever we did the Internet just didn't seem to work, but now I'm back on a slightly improved machine and with a shiny new ISP! The upside is of course is that I have lots to say! So much has happened..

I received those GCSE results I was in such anticipation of and... was pleasantly surprised! I achieved 2 A* 's, 4 A's, 4 B's, 1 C. I'm now continuing to study at sixth form and of course my work for Love Music Hate Racism.

I spent quite a few days working in the office over the holidays doing various bits and pices, mainly due to the sheer amount of free time i had. It was quite different to what i had expected! I had imagined a large open plan office, what i found on my arrival was two quite small rooms with about 4 desks crammed in each and a bathroom in the middle! I did alot of typing. By the end of the day my fingers were so tired i could scarcely hold a msn conversation! It gave me a much larger respect for those who travel in everyday and do 9-5 in an office. I was utterly exhausted!

We also had a fair few events of the summer. Firstly, both of the school visits we were planning took place. They both happened on the 14th of July, one at my school, Barking Abbey, the second at Jo Richardson community school a short distance away. Both Frances and I (who is a school friend and has been involved with LMHR along with myself from the start) attended our school event as representatives - as attendee's of the school and people who are involved in the campaign. We arrived to see a lot of worried looking people on our arrival – Donna was giggling nervously, Weyman was pacing, Lee was shouting at people down the phone.. There was also a pretty, shy-seeming, young woman who was sitting on one of the sofa's by our reception fervently looking over some pages of scrawled writing and reading them out loud.

I didn't recognise her at first but Lee soon came over to introduced her as Naomi, and when she stood up to shake our hands I realised – this was Miss Dynamite! Me and Frances were soon whisked away and told to set up the stall which we did as all the students, Year 10 and 11's filed into the hall. They had no idea of what was about to happen, only that a 'special assembly' was taking place, they were all quite excited! My sociology and drama teachers got up on stage to announce rather excitedly what was happening, introducing our special guest! The noise from the students when she appeared was SO loud, but they soon quietened down and listened (pretty attentively surprisingly!) to the speech she had to read. She talked about how important it was to respect each others cultures and celebrate diversity, saying that "being different should not be ridiculed or interpreted as an offence, but is seen for what it truly is - a beautiful gift.". She gave examples of how people from so many different cultures and background have given so much to our world, listing inventors and scientists such as Einstein. She then asked the students if they had any questions, this resulted in much hilarity! We stood at the back of the hall laughing. Some of them were pretty cheeky, asking her if she had a boyfriend or if she would sing to them , to which Ms Dynamite replied, "no but you can" so the girl got up and gave us a mini-performance – which was amusing! They also had some quite intelligent questions to ask about racism, what she had experienced, how she thought they should deal with it. After the speech there was a lot of press waiting and we had to have our pictures taken for LMHR as well as other press that had turned out. She left the hall from the front and walked towards the quads which Weyman thought was a good location for the pictures, this however was a mistake! All the students leaving the hall from the back entrance followed us out and swamped us and the photographers, attempting to get the picture! We was mobbed I tell ya! Naomi was wonderfully calm in this situation, telling everyone to relax and back off a bit! We had a few more pictures taken outside but when it became impossible again we were directed inside.

Frances and I, along with a few school children were then interviewed by various people and had lots more pictures taken. They stood in front of us and yelled, "Over here please" while directing what seemed like hundred of flashes in our direction! By the ended of it I was blinded! There was actually quite a lot of press there that day, a few local papers, the BBC, London tonight, we even got interviewed for 'The Sun' which was rather surreal... Once she had left and everyone had calmed down slightly, we met up with the other group which had been to the Jo Richardson visit, walking to the café for some much needed refreshment while reporting back on how the day had gone. Overall it was a really positive event! There's a report both visits here on the Love music hate racism site  One written by myself! There was also a very amusingly negative but significantly .. misguided.. shall we say, report about it on the BNP web site, since encouraging children to be Anti-racist is such a BAD thing! Urg, sometimes you have to laugh...

Ooooh. What else has happened. We helped out at 'In the mix' festival, which was not organised by us but which we supported. It was supposed to be a fete kinda thing with different foods, music, stalls, activities. What it actually was, was well.. disorganised...quiet! We got there about 10 and arrange our stall ready for it all to kick off by about 11, but soon realised, we were practically the only ones setting up.. The same was the case an hour later when it was meant to begin with the exception of a few other charity and food stalls.. The ladies who had actually organising it weren't even coming and had left a rather bewildered bloke in charge! The P.A system hadn't even arrived! In the end, Lee decided to take over, we got the P.A system up and some stuff happening on stage and it finally, very slowly, began.. All the stall holders arrived and a few people started milling about.. but I mean a few.. Nevertheless, we carried on with the stall, talking to those that were there and (mostly successfully) getting people to sign up to the mailing list.. The four people I felt most sorry for that day were The Metro Riots. Now, they are a pretty good band and can pull crowds of 1000 or so people in the venues of central london, but on a grey Saturday afternoon in September, in the middle of marks gate they played to a grand total of 6, yes, 6 people. Two of those people were me and Frankie! They were pretty understandably unimpressed, though quite comical about it .. we chatted to them later in an attempt to console them.. bless 'em. Later however, when some of the more Urban acts started playing a reasonably good crowd of 50 or so people seemed to appear suddenly from no-where! So I guess the last bit of the day was better. After we'd closed and tidied-up we then went off to the pub – not however in the name of recreation but another exciting event we were organising!

We'd had the rather excellent band Dirty Pretty Things booked for the 30th September for quite a while, and had arranged several different venues but each one seemed to back out or have problems soon after it was confirmed... It was already the 9th of September, about 20 days to go and this pub – The Cauliflower, was pretty much our last hope. Luckily, it was great, suiting our needs pretty much perfectly apart from we'd have to be a bit stricter on ages than we wanted. But the owners were happy, we were relieved, it was arranged! In the coming weeks we vivaciously sold tickets and promoted as much as we could. We were rewarded by the fact the event was completely sold out – about 400 of so tickets all gone! It night itself was also amazing. As well as Dirty Pretty Things, Roll Deep, O.T crew, Rock I.D, The Mentalists and a real range of people performed who were pretty much as diverse as the audience watching.

The whole place had such a good atmosphere. We got there quite early (we were on decorating duty!) spending most of the night on the stall as usual among other tasks here and there.. I was even persuaded by Lee to go up and speak on stage, don't ask me how.. He still owes me a drink for the experience. Marcia was up first and said a lot of good stuff, getting the crowd excited, I walked on, realised I was too short to talk into the microphone and walked straight off again! Lee however persisted, and gave me some stuff to talk about. A second attempt, with the microphone lowered, it was over! I ran away back to the relative safety of the stall! It was a really really long night, the headliners DPT didn't go on until about midnight. They were SO worth it though, Carl and the boys were amazing as always playing a loud and energetic set! They were also very lovely when Alison led us upstairs for a quick chat! She knew what fan-girls we were and said it would be a bit of a treat for all our hard work over the last year and a half! All in all it was such a great night, everyone we talked to was really enthusiastic about what were now and said what a wonderful time they had. We left, exhausted, at about 2am with a really good nights work done.

The last significant thing we did in my area was the Black History Month Event we organised at Barking college. This took place on the weekend just gone, (the 28th) and I spent most of my half term out and about with Drew and Donna leafleting and promoting it. It was a day of various workshops and discussions about various issues centred around celebrating and educating people about Black History. They were all pretty lively and I was proud to contribute.

Apart from the usual meeting and such it's all a bit quiet on the volunteering front until the end of the month now when we have a fundraiser night at Fabric which should be a good night. Congratulations if you've got this far having also read the rest of this entry! I told you it was going to be long... =D

Posted by Carolynn ( 5:07 PM )
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Wednesday Jun 28, 2006

Busy, busy, busy!

 Hello! Apologies for the lack of new posts from me recently but I've been pretty busy with exams! Now they're all over I'm going to have plenty of time to do a lot more work for LMHR and keep this blog up to date.

Quite a lot has happened since I last wrote anything – the most major event being the fact that (due to the fact we had some pretty appalling election results in our area – despite a lot of campaigning and hard work..) we have our own focus group in Barking and Dagenham. We had our first meeting a few weeks back to discuss some initial ideas and plans of action for the area. Most of these I'm not sure I can discuss here but it's all pretty exciting! They're gonna keep me pretty busy this summer!

One of the main things we are currently organising is a school's tour of Barking and Dagenham. We go into a secondary school with a speaker from LMHR and a musical artist – someone who the students respect and listen to and talk to them about what we do and why it's important to be culturally tolerant – that racism isn't acceptable. Right now were approaching both schools and artists who want to take part and arranging dates.. it takes a lot of organising.. Our first is pretty soon and I'll be helping out at that too. The second should hopefully be at my school – I had to go have formal meeting with my head teacher to propose the idea which was pretty scary but he was quite enthusiastic which was brilliant and it should go well.

I'll also be doing some work in the LMHR office whenever I'm free over the summer to help with the work load and wherever I'm needed with all the usual gigs, festivals and events. There's also the RISE anti-racist festival next week in Finsbury park which I will be attending however it's arranged by the Mayor of London, not us, so it probably wont be as good!  I'll certainly have lots to do anyway – at least it'll take my mind of my looming exam results!

Posted by Carolynn ( 1:33 PM )
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Thursday May 04, 2006

Anti-BNP rally

I am so tired that I can't actually feel the lower half of my body. And considering I have spent the last 11 hours on my feet that is no exaggeration. But, bloody hell, today has been worth it.

Today [April 29th] was the day of our Love Music Hate Racism Rally in Trafalgar square. Its aim was to explain to people the threat that the BNP pose to our society and to encourage people not to vote for them in the up and coming elections as well as raising money for the cost of the even and future events. I also helped out at this event last year, my first ever event volunteering for LMHR.

The day began, rather traumatically, at 7am. Up bright and early, I met friends at 9, and we hopped onto the district line from Upney to Embankment and short walk from there to Trafalgar square for our stewards meeting at 10:30. (Although it wasn't quite as simple as this as a short excursion, which should have been 2 tube stops took 6! Grrr.. engineering works. ) So, slightly distressed, we arrived at Trafalgar Square 15 minutes late.

Soon after we arrived (and tried to stifle our excitement about the fact Belle and Sebastian were sound checking on stage!) we had a short meeting just to let everyone know what we would do in the event of an emergency, why the event was taking place and what we would all be doing. We were all put into groups depending how we were helping on the day – some were on stalls, some were helping backstage, some were stewarding, some were collecting donations. Our group as with last year (which included me, Frances, Leah, Kirsty a few of her friends from school (Mira, Kafiya, Miriam) our group leaders Pheobe and Jess as well as any random helpers who were about when we needed help!) were on the stalls! The next thing to do was set up our stall. This basically  meant carrying (dragging.. ) lots of boxes from the van to our stall and then from there to another place.. and another place.. and another place.. until they decided they were happy with were it was and then putting out all the Merch - T-shirts, badges and pamphlets - making it look pretty! We so won at this! All stalls paled in comparison to ours! =D Then all we had to do was wait about for everybody to start flooding in and have a laugh..

And it really is a laugh. . Even if it is hard work and you get tired after a while .. especially after 11 hours WITHOUT a chair.  All the people we work with are incredibly awesome. Being on a stall basically just involves selling people the merch, giving out information and talking to people  - especially all the randomers that come along who this year included funky dancing lady, two men dressed elvis style, and a town crier! In fact the only people who weren't at all friendly were one of bands who performed  - The Paddingtons. Everyone going in and out of the backstage area donated by throwing some change into our donations bucket as they went past but.. no.. They were too good for that! They just laughed at us and walked past! At which point Kafiya called them all anorexics and got given the finger. The lead singer even demanded that someone go find some gaffer tape for his shoe and expected her to put it on his shoe for him and then walked off when she refused! How rude huh? There are some even dodgier backstage stories about them but I wont tell them here.. All of the rest of the bands were ace though! We got to go off every now and again into the crowd to see whichever bands we wanted to see. The band of the day had to be the Metro riots. They were only on for about 10 minutes but their set was amazing. Their sound was so big it managed to fill the entire square and get everyone dancing. They've been ace every time I've seen them and they are incredibly nice guys too. Another high point band wise were Boy Kill Boy who invoked mass sing-alongs and Lethal Bizzle who even got the indie kids excited with his version of 22 Grand Job.

About half 6 we started packing up as everyone began to disappear into the crowd for the last band of the day – Belle and Sebastian. They were great! We didn't manage to get our whole group to the front so we moved away from the stage and danced around, our collection bucket in the middle, with anybody who decided to join us! Much fun! As soon as it was finished we conga lined back to to our stalls to serve the massive crowds which had left the stage and swamped us!

After another two hours or so of running about and getting whatever people wanted we finally started putting everything away until next year! And judging by the success and the amount of money we took this year (About 5 times the year before by my judgement!) we'll be able to put on something even bigger and better!  At last when we'd hugged everyone goodbye and almost everyone else had gone home we left Trafalgar square, at 9pm, exhausted, and much in need of some food! That way everybody – there's a Pizza hut!!!!!!

Posted by Carolynn ( 12:23 PM )
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My charity

The Charity for which I volunteer, Love Music Hate Racism, are a charity who work to promote good community race relations and to campaign against and make people aware of the threat of fascist organisations such as the BNP. I often contribute to organised events such as gigs, carnivals and help to leaflet my local area and have been doing so since for around a year.

I kind of fell into volunterring really - I first became involved with Love Music Hate Racism when I heard that an artist who I am a fan of was performing in Trafalgar square as part of the yearly May Day rally in Trafalgar square. I, and a small group of friends decided we would attend and phoned up for more information but instead ended up offering our services for the day! We spent the day running around helping to set up, selling t-shirts and badges, handing out information and talking to the public and whatever else needed to be done! It was an incredibly rewarding experience and we have continued to help ever since.

I really get a lot of out what I do. My volunteering experience has given me a lot of opportunities, career wise – (It has given me contacts with quite a few people I may work with in the future) and has allowed me to do things I didn't think I would accomplish - all while helping a good cause. I've gained life skills, my confidence has increased greatly and I've met one of my idols as well as lots of other lovely people. I have a lot of fun as well as having something to put on my C.V for future employers to look at. I hope reading this blog will encourage you to find something you could do which would give you a similarly gratifying experience.

I plan to continue working for Love Music Hate Racism for as long as I can am currently looking forward to my second May Day Rally in Trafalgar square this Saturday.

Posted by Carolynn ( 11:59 AM )
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Hello there

Well hello there! I’m Carolynn and I will be using this space to write about my experiences volunteering for the organisation Love Music Hate racism. I’m 16 and still at school, working towards taking my GCSE’s this summer, (A rather scary experience!). When I’m not working and revising hard(!) I can often be found exploring various areas of London, at a gig, or in my room listening to music and playing my guitar.

Posted by Carolynn ( 11:23 AM )
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