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!

It's official – I'm no longer a young person

In December I turned 26, and as far as I can tell, this is the point at which I stop being a young person. Firstly, I bid a fond farewell to my Young Person's Railcard (only 34 years to wait until I am eligible for my Senior Card...). Secondly, this is the cut off point for most “youth” volunteering projects and one year ago at the ripe old age of 25, this was my motivating factor to quit my 9 to 5 job and get involved in some of the exciting youth projects happening in the UK. I was lucky enough to get involved in an exciting project in Devon funded by V inspired, the youth volunteering organisation which funded projects for 16-25 year olds, just before the project finished. Before turning 26, I also managed to get an application in for O2's Think Big project, funding community projects for people aged 13 – 25. I feel that I've made the most of the last year of my youth, but it doesn't stop now that I'm just a person (not a young person). Volunteering is for everyone and I'm sure I'll find lots of exciting projects for old people, like me...

Front Page News!

My photograph on the front page of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust website (there's a credit on their which is just about visible...)

Selby Jolly

I've been having a little blogger's block recently. But after a lovely day volunteering and the prospect of being on holiday next week, I'm feeling inspired again! Even better, I suddenly have a couple of days where I have nothing to do except sort my life out a little - which includes writing a couple of decent posts! But until I get around to doing that I'm going to write about my volunteering jolly to Selby.
The YWT in Selby are based at the Stockbridge Technology Centre, where lots of agricultural and horticultural research takes place, and we went to visit them to harvest some willow for our Christmas craft event. It always good to go to new places and see the way other people work, so here is a list of my highlights of the day:

• Trying medlars for the first time (I like how the RHS qualify them as a"traditional, if unusual, treat")
•  Seeing some unusual crab apple trees absolutely laden with beautiful, bright red fruit - how very festive! We got a bag full for our Christmas crafts and I also got a pocket full to cook up. I made a purée which was quite a lot of work for a very small amount... but mixed with some elderberries and blackberries it should make a lovely foraged pie!
• Spotting a hare and watching him run away from us. He went for miles and was so steady, it was just like he was on a track like the "hares" at the dogs!
• Watching a gang of long tailed tits enjoying the bird feeding station and catching a glimpse of some yellow hammer (one of the only birds I can identify by its song!)
• Trying Yarrow Tea. I'm not sure if it really tasted of much other than the honey and lemon that went into the jug with it, but at least now I know that it can be used to make tea!

Stirley Stories

We hosted a Community Reporter workshop on the Farm this week and used our newly gained skills to interview our lovely volunteers about their experience on Stirley Community Farm. Here is a video which was edited from our interviews very quickly by the lovely people at Growing Newsome.

At the workshop I was actually surprised about how difficult it is to interview people, and to be interviewed! I found having a camera pointed in my face very off-putting and therefore found it quite difficult to talk about things that I normally talk about everyday! On the other side of the camera I had a similar nervous reaction but after a few goes I found I was getting better at it. Not quite Paxman yet though.

Palm Oil Revisited

As part of my food diary for Oxfam's GROW week, I wrote a rather lengthy post about Palm Oil. A couple of weeks later BBC Radio 4's Food Programme featured an episode about Palm Oil which I would recommend listening to.
It may have answered my query about the two differently labelled biscuit packets in Sainsburys, where one said "Made with Sustainable Palm Oil" and the other said "Supports Sustainable Palm Oil". It turns out that there is a somewhat dubious "credit" system where companies can purchase unaccredited (and most likely not sustainably produced) Palm Oil then buy a certificate from sustainable producers to compensate... Hmmm.
It's certainly a very interesting programme and well worth a listen. Palm Oil itself seems to be almost some kind of wonder product - it's only the way its production in response to the ever increasing global demand is being managed.
I found the last part of the programme which looked at Palm Oil as a traditional ingredient in some African countries, comparing it to the equivalent of Olive Oil in Italian cooking, particularly thought provoking. I had never even considered the heritage of Palm Oil - from which it is now very far removed.