Health and social care is one of the largest volunteering sectors in the UK. This includes organisations like the NHS and charities which improve the wellbeing of people of all ages. So what do helpers actually get involved with? The opportunities are more diverse than we imagined as our bloggers reveal.

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Friday Jun 18, 2010

The very very least I could do

Ive been neglecting this blog for a few weeks and for that I can only apologise.

Last night was really really really busy. Today I am exhausted. Two hours of washing up and an hour and half of chopping onions and garlic is terribly tiring. This is the unglamorous side of volunteering in all its glory.

Some people perhaps wouldn’t want to spend their Thursday evenings washing up 50 peoples dirty dishes, or chopping thirty onions and 12 bulbs of garlic. I wouldn’t have ever said that these would do it for me. But you know what? I wouldn’t want to spend my Thursdays doing anything else now.  

Last night was a bit sad for me, washing up and onions aside, one of my favorite guests is leaving the shelter. He has managed to find a house and is moving in today. This is excellent news for him but incredibly sad for me. He has become one of the regular faces in my life that I look forward to seeing. If I'm sad and fed up he makes me smile, and if I make a mistake he laughs with me. He is a very cheery person and he will be missed by all of us volunteers. But I'm very happy for him and he seems very excited by his move. I will be looking forward to hearing all about it when he comes in to visit us.

His situation has confirmed in my mind why I am doing what I am doing. He had been at the shelter since October and the staff at the shelter have helped give him some stability, support and a safe place to stay while he found a permanent home.

I can not bare to think what would have happened to him if he had been rough sleeping for the last 9 months. Thinking about the possibilities scare me a lot, and yet I know that there is more homeless people sleeping in the streets of London every night. Wikipedia has just told me that in the UK there are 10,459 rough sleepers and  98,750 households in temporary accommodation.

This is a shocking statistic. Homeless can affect anyone and I think that we are all guilty of carrying around a stereotype in our heads about what type of person becomes homeless. We often think of alcoholics, addicts, people that have just come out of prison. I have found, through volunteering, that this is not actually true. Homelessness can affect anyone. Anyone. I heard someone say that you are only ever one paycheque and an unfortunate incident away from loosing your home.

I went on some training recently, for another volunteering role at crisis. We had a session on this subject, and what makes up the Homeless population in the UK and it includes:

• Young people who have just left the care system;
• Men and Women who were previously high earners who lost their jobs, or are homeless due to relationship breakups;
• Ex service men;
• Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers;
• Women escaping domestic violence;
  

The list goes on, and of course it includes addicts, but what I wanted to illustrate is that it can happen to you. It can happen to me. Every guest at the shelter has a different story, some of the guests are from backgrounds similar to mine. Some of them work, the majority want to work. I have heard horrendous stories about people being attacked, physically and verbally, and sexually abused while rough sleeping, and the stories have bought me to tears and kept me awake at night.

If I can play my part to help a charity that is keeping these people safe and giving them stability then I will happily wash up for two hours and chop onions every Thursday night. It’s the least I can do.

Posted by Jenni ( 2:44 PM )
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Tuesday May 11, 2010

I dont believe in Charity. I believe in Solidarity

 

Thursday was a significant day for a lot of you because it was the day you got to go and vote. I did the same but that’s not the only thing I did on Thursday. I was volunteering again (although after I proudly went into the voting booth and crossed my piece of paper and whispered thank you to Emmeline Pankhurst!)

Homeless people can vote, the parliament Uk website says that a homeless person can vote if they register using a declaration of local connection. So, how do you go about doing that? Well you can visit your local Electoral Registration Office and fill out a form saying where you would live if you were not homeless and where you have lived in the past plus you have to detail where you spend most of your time, in a day shelter, on the streets etc.. This helped clear up in my mind the common misconception that homeless people cant vote.

They don’t make it easy though and I wasn’t surprised that the majority of the guests at the shelter hadn’t voted. (Well, out of all the guests I spoke to).

So that’s what I learnt on Thursday.  Pretty interesting stuff.  A friend of mine, Clive, who is homeless and spends a lot of time in Old Street station with his dog Bilo didn’t know he could do that. So, just goes to show how publically available that information is.

Anyway, back to volunteering. The atmosphere was that of Christmas Eve in the kitchen. The other volunteers and I voicing our concerns over a Conservative government and had practically convinced each other that no one in their right mind would vote conservative and we were full of anticipation for would happen that night and I think it had a good effect on dinner. It was delicious! We even had apple crumble and ice cream for afters. The funniest part of the night was looking over at the TV area where about 15  men were sitting watching Grease the musical. 15 men. Sitting. With blank faces and not a smile between them. But not one of them changed the channel. It was incredible and im sure they left it on because they were enjoying Sonia, another volunteer, sing out of tune and dance to the songs! J

I also spent a long time talking to one of the guests who bought in his beautiful dog Tara. It was really interesting listening to his story and I went home feeling lucky. Lucky my life so far has been relatively easy and that I haven’t had to face the challenges other people have had to. But I also went home feeling positive. He’s a positive person and his energy is catching.

As Eduardo Galeano once said: "I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people."

I found my Thursday incredibly educational, and yet another thing I have learned thanks to giving up my time to volunteer.

Posted by Jenni ( 9:45 AM )
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Tuesday May 04, 2010

Bokbokbok

This Thursday at the shelter seemed fraught and was fast paced. Im not sure if it was the storm brewing outside that had an affect on everyone feeling hot and bothered and edgy but everyone seemed a little fed up. When I mean everyone, I mean the kitchen volunteers in particular. It didn’t help that we were deboning and skinning chicken for an hour and a half . Hey! Who says volunteering isn’t glamorous?!

But were not phased easily and it was wonderful seeing how some people cope under pressure. Tammy made me laugh and joked about the whole chicken disaster and Ed, a new volunteer took everything in his stride. I spoke with a volunteer who I hadn’t had a chance to speak to before and I learnt a lot about her. By the end of the evening we had the giggles and the stress of it seemed to have disappeared.

It reminded me of boring maths classes at school when I would sit in the back row and giggle about the ridiculousness of maths equations with one friend or another.

But what do you do when you have stress in the “volunteering place”? Well, we did what we would do in any work place. We approached the Volunteer Manager, Louis. Louis is great, he seems to have a whole heap of energy and it really rubs off on the people around him. He motivated us and made us feel good about what we were doing. He encouraged us to continue. As a volunteer manager in my paid non-volunteering job I know I can learn a lot from Louis.

So, volunteering doesn’t just allow me to say “I can help cook meals for a lot of people” on my CV it also allows me to say I can cope under pressure, I can work with people from different backgrounds and who work differently to me and it means I can say I understand how volunteers feel and the importance of excellent volunteer management, because I have first hand experience!

So what was for dinner? well it was surprisingly delicious chicken and mushroom sauce and rice. We even got ice cream for afters, although I may never want to see another chicken. Ever.

Posted by Jenni ( 3:57 PM )
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Monday Apr 19, 2010

Cheese Sauce and Lots of Smiles

Another Thursday and another evening at Shelter from the Storm. This Thursday I helped out in the kitchen, helping to cook a hot meal for 45 guests.

This is a mammoth task and it isn't helped by the fact that we don't get much of a say about what food is available. A lot of the food is donated or is on special offer in the supermarket, so we really are on a budget! This week it was oven fish, you know, the kind you get in the freezer section in the supermarket. And to go with this we had mashed potatoes. Not a very appealing meal but it was made delicious with a  bit of imagination and a cheese sauce which went down so well we had a que for seconds!

Now im sure you don't want to hear about my culinary skills (although the cheese sauce was made by me and tasted amazing!) or the mountains of washing up we had to do afterwards. Something I decided to write about this week is the people ive met while volunteering.

It would probably sound a little cliché to say that ive made friends with some lovely people while volunteering and that it leaves me with a bit of a warm glow, but its true.

Its not just the guests that I have enjoyed talking too, although I do enjoy talking to them, it's the other volunteers too. When I started volunteering I have to be honest and say I had a pre conceived idea of what a fellow "volunteer" would be like. Older perhaps, not much of a life, after all who has time to give up an entire evening of their week? Someone with no life, I thought! (I know, ridiculous isn't it? Especially since I was volunteering!!!) I could not have been more wrong.

I have met people of all ages but mostly people the same age as me, with very similar interests. I even met a lovely girl called Tammy, who lives just round the corner from me in another part of London. Tammy is very funny – we share exactly the same sense of humour and laugh a lot when we volunteer together. I enjoy getting the bus home with Tammy and talking about boys, work and our week almost as much as actually volunteering. Varina is a lovely Austrian girl who is the same age as me and we often work together in the Kitchen. Varina makes me smile and amazes me with her ability to cope under pressure even when the rice doesn't cook properly! I would never have met Tammy, Varina or all the other lovely volunteers if weren't for Shelter from the Storm.

So if you are considering volunteering I recommend doing it and doing it as soon as possible. Not only will it give you the lovely feeling that you helping people less fortunate yourself, I guarantee a lot of laughter and a lot of lovely people just waiting to meet you!!

It even make washing up for two hours worth while......

 

Posted by Jenni ( 4:14 PM )
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Thursday Apr 08, 2010

Shelter from the storm

Hi

I'm Jenni, im a volunteer for Shelter from the Storm, a homeless charity in London.

So why do I volunteer at Shelter from the Storm? Well, it all started when I volunteered for Crisis over the Christmas period. I always knew homelessness was an issue, it didn't take much to work that out, I just had to take a stroll down my road to meet more than one Big Issue seller, or take a walk through Old Street station and you will meet 5 or 6 homeless people in the space of five hundred yards. But with a few weeks over Christmas with the prospect of not much more than eating turkey and staring at the TV I decided to put my time to use and volunteered for Crisis, at their dependency centre. This is the temporary shelter that the charity Shelter put up for homeless people with alcohol or drug dependency's for a few weeks every Christmas.

I'd never done any volunteering like this before. I met homeless people, helped them get warm clothes, a bed to sleep in and some warm food. Some people shared their life stories with me, others just sat and played scrabble. I found myself enjoying it and when Christmas was over and I'd waved goodbye to some new friends I thought I needed to do something that felt a little more permanent. Soon after I received an email from Crisis saying that an organisation called Shelter from the Storm was looking for volunteers.

I jumped at the chance of doing some similar voluntary work and signed up straight away. Within a week I had secured myself a regular Thursday shift and I realised just how different it was volunteering in a permanent shelter. The atmosphere is welcoming and calm, the guests and volunteers friendly and approachable. The shelter sleeps 45 guests each night apart from Friday night when it is closed.  The guests have a bed to sleep in for as long as they need it, and two cooked meals a day.

No drugs or alcohol can be consumed on the premises, so the atmosphere is slightly different to Dependency Centre, but just as enjoyable.

I help to cook dinner, wash up, fold clothes, play ping pong and listen to anything any of the guests would like to talk to me about.

During my time at SFTS I will be writing this blog, to talk about my experience volunteering for a homeless charity!

Keep an eye out for updates...

 

Posted by Jenni ( 9:33 AM )
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