You don't have to be crazy to volunteer here...

Somehow, without trying  or even asking, I seem to have got myself an amazing work experience opportunity, so this week my blog comes direct from Westminster. After visiting my MP some time ago, I was invited by him to work with him for a week in his london office. If I had to choose one word to describe my first day, it would be: surreal. 

It was surreal first of all, just to be doing it! I got a bit of a kick out of being (relatively) smartly dressed and walking around London thinking "look at me, all smart, walking around London like I know where I'm going, like I've got a job or something..." My boyfriend text me saying "how does it feel to be living the dream?" as I was coming up from the underground at Westminster. Pretty strange, I thought, as it's someone else's dream I'm living! 

I was hit by a second wave of surreality during my tour of parliament.Soon after arriving, I was rushed down to Westminster Hall to get a place on the tour to find out some more of the history and just how things happen in my temporary place of work. As I was being shown around the different rooms, told about the various ceremonies, taking in all the pomp and rituality, a thought hit me. "This is how the most important decisions, things that effect all of our every day lives, are made." It seems to work, so leave them to it I guess.

The rest of the day continued in the same vein. There was a moment where I was literally RUNNING through the corridors of parliament. I felt like I was in a film. A comedy, I think. The conclusion I came to is that it's the kind of workplace that could stand to have one of those sign's that reads "you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps".  

2011 - Year of the Volunteer

The UN designated 2011 “International Year of the Volunteer”, and so did I, although I didn't realise it at the time. I had dabbled in volunteer work days and helping out at events, but as of January 2011, I became a full-time volunteer.

My volunteering journey started when I was offered a placement on the Sharpham Estate in Devon. Along with three other volunteers, I lived on a low impact yurt camp on the estate and worked on conservation and environmental tasks as well as community outreach and education. I learnt a lot in the 15 weeks I spent as a volunteer at Sharpham, perhaps most importantly, what my main interests and motivating factors are. I think for a lot of people, the main barrier they face is knowing what it actually is they want to do when it comes down to the specifics, especially in a sector like conservation. The best way to find out is just to get out there and do it! Volunteering such a good way of exploring this due to the amount of variety these positions normally enjoy. On my placement at Sharpham, as well as general conservation tasks which for us included battling against lots of invasive species such as rhododendron, laurel, willow herb and bull rushes we also helped out in the walled vegetable garden and going to see other projects as part of our outreach, which was perhaps my favourite thing about the placement. We went to help out at a wide range of projects including a recently created wetland area, a “glamping”site in a small private woodland and the very early stages of a community growing project where a small group of people had teamed up to buy a field which would then be used to produce food for the local area. For getting a first hand experience in such a wide range of projects, I realised that community projects about food and farming were what interested me the most. Having realised this, imagine how excited I was when I saw an advert for a traineeship with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on a community farm project near Huddersfield! I got the placement, thanks to the skills and experience I'd gained through previous voluntary roles, and started at Stirley Community Farm in July. In six months working on the farm, I've learned and achieved a lot and got a new confidence that I didn't have before I started my volunteering odyssey. One of the best things about being involved in the Stirley farm project is that it is powered by volunteers, meaning that I get to work with a lot of like-minded, interesting people who understand what I'm doing, because they're doing it to!

I should give you one warning about volunteering – it is highly addictive! As well as being a full-time volunteer for the YWT, I also volunteer for Oxfam, the Eco-Schools programme, and regularly journey to Manchester to help out with events at the Manchester Museum. When people ask me why I do what I do, one of the easiest things for them to grasp is that it is to get a good CV and help me get a job but that's really just a small part of it. Of course that's one of the very welcome side-effects, but the main reason is because of the enjoyment I get out of it. You couldn't be a volunteer if you didn't enjoy it! I remember a discussion I had at an Oxfam training weekend, where one girl I was talking to was quite shocked when I said that volunteering is never a completely selfless act. The volunteer always gets something good out of it too, even if we're just talking about a warm fuzzy feeling, otherwise no-one would do it!

A quick bit of research tells me that 2012 is the UN International Year of Cooperatives but for me it continues to be the year of volunteering... For the next six months at least!