Hi all,
Call it the start of a mid-life 'crises', but as I head towards 40 my mind is increasingly turning to how I can give something back to the community.
Hi Bushman,
Good on you. Volunteering can be immensely rewarding. I've been involved since about age 30 when I joined Lifeline as a telephone counsellor. Just even the training period is a great experience where you learn more about yourself than the work you're potentially doing. I continued with this for about 8 years and met some really good friends through it as well.
I have two or three areas that I would be very interested in pursuing, namely:
1. helping women and kids recover from family violence;
I've always assumed you're a bloke, and if that's right, then maybe this wouldn't be the best choice. Most of the volunteers (and paid staff) in the various organisations in this field are women, essentially because most abused women have a low trust of men. There might, however, be opportunities for you to help in a practical rather than emotional sense with doing repairs to refuges etc if you have any handyman skills.
There will be several organisations in Melbourne from refuges to counselling services. A starting point would be to contact any Community Centre and ask.
2. helping kids that have drifted astray back into the workforce
There's a big need for this and/or mentoring of students still at school. The mentoring program here I've been involved with for about ten years works with kids in the schools and also with a separate program for kids who have dropped out. This is pretty tough going but there have been some great successes.
Contact would probably via schools or youth organisations, or maybe even just google 'mentoring' in your area.
You might also be interested in online mentoring via the Smith Family where you spend an hour a week on your computer chatting with a student in a different area. I did this for the first time this year and found it less than great as a process. Also didn't like that we received no background about the students, just the gender and age, so it was difficult to know how practical it would be, e.g., to encourage them toward tertiary education.
Another really interesting area you might not have considered is literacy tutoring for adults who didn't ever learn to read and write. These people are at a huge disadvantage (can't even fill out a Centrelink form etc) and eager to learn. I've probably enjoyed this more than any other of the volunteer work I've done and some of the people's stories put our own petty troubles into proportion.
3. visiting older people that may be lonely or helping them with food and medicine if they are struggling to make ends meet.
Yes, always needed. Nursing homes are very grateful for people prepared to visit those with no family.
Again, your community centres should be able to put you in touch with the appropriate organisations.
Many elderly folk who are frail and/or have lost confidence are very grateful for someone to eg go shopping with them, change their library books etc.
Another area is emergency relief assessment, usually run through community agencies or churches where people in financial difficulty request help with food, electricity etc. This can be demoralising and anger-inducing when they quite candidly tell you they can't pay the bills because they've spent too much on the pokies or booze etc.
Try govolunteer.org (or some variation of that) for a list of available volunteer positions throughout Australia.
I've noticed a distinct change in how organisations vet volunteers now compared with when I started.
All now do a police check and many require a blue card.
The only problem is I have no idea how to get started? I am not religious but understand that a lot of religious organisations are at the front end of providing such services.
I'd suggest not necessarily being put off religious organisations, none of which I've had contact with have imposed any religion on their volunteers. The only negative I'd say about the church organisations is that they are often unrealistic, and will continue handing out help/money to people who have no ambition to actually change their lives, learn to budget etc, rather than limit the handouts. It's nice to believe in people, but they don't seem to get that they're just being used in many instances.
Hope some of the above might help. The overwhelming take out message that I'd have for volunteering is that it's a great way to constantly be reminded of how fortunate we are, that we're simply not all born with equal opportunity, and if we're able to make the lives of a few other people a bit easier, then we benefit every bit as much as they do.
All the best, bushman. Hope you'll keep us posted on what you find.
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PS to Pavilion. Great effort. Also shows us how much good some of the churches do. Thanks for telling us about it.