Category Archives: Volunteer

Countdown to Selfless Sunday

Posted on by under Volunteer, Volunteering

So it’s Thursday right now and in a few days time, it’ll be my birthday! This year has flown by. Lots of amazing things have happened. Lots of awful things have happened too. As mentioned in a previous post for my birthday, rather than doing the usual night in a bar getting off my face drunk, hating life and regretting my life choices, I’ve decided to spend a day doing random acts of kindness.

Now I fully expect this to be significantly less popular than a bar and getting slaughtered. However, lots of people have been really kind, sent things that I can use to make everyone’s day a little nicer. So I’ll be joined by a few people on Sunday to do some goodness. #SelflessSunday

I’ll be tweeting on #SelflessSunday and@Albysaurus so if you’d like to follow the action, please get stuck in! For those of you who read this who are SUPER KEEN please feel free to join me. 🙂 I’ll be meeting most people at Victoria Station, London at 2pm. We’ll be starting from there. I’ll be buying as many flowers as possible in the station so that we can hand them out. I’ll be bringing books, pens, postcards, post-it’s everything we can get our hands on so that we can write out as manynice messages as possible. This was the original list:

  1. A meal for a homeless person
  2. Help an old person/person less physically able with their shopping or cross the road
  3. Sing for the sick
  4. Sing for random people to put a smile on their face.
  5. Write and distribute positive notes to strangers
  6. Tape some coins to a vending machine for the next person
  7. Give strangers a flower
  8. Pay for a coffee for the next person in the queue
  9. Community clean up
  10. Pop up yoga session for people
  11. Give Blood
  12. Give random people a compliment

We might not be able to do them all on the day but we’re going to do as many as we can and make it as fun as possible for everyone involved. 🙂

If you’re not able to make it please make sure that you just do a little good deed for the day. Tell your loved ones you love them. Help someone cross the road. Hold the door open for someone. Smile at someone!

A

 

 

The Recovery Part 8: Success In Selflessness

Posted on by under #cheerupchallenge, Anxiety, Appreciation, Campaign, Depression, Happiness, Life, Little Things, Mental Health, Recovery, Selfless, Selflessness, Social, Volunteer, Volunteering

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why the f*** is this guy sauntering back onto the web to tell us things when he ditched us for so long. Well that’s totally fair. I’ve been pretty shitty when it comes to blogging the last few months (not that I was particularly consistent before).

Well the short version is that I was taking a break from blogging as I’d run out of things to talk about. I’m sure everyone was getting rid of hearing about my recovery (though I’m clearly writing about it still) which is still ongoing, though I am doing better. Panic attacks are limited now to bed time when I have too much time to think (so I’ve been playing retro Pokémon games to fall asleep faster with less panics). Social anxiety is lessening, though please don’t put me in a room with a whole load of people I don’t know and tell me to socialise. I will cower in fear, hide in a corner and most likely hyperventilate.

My reason for writing this post is that I feel as though I’d lost my way with this blog recently. It started as a blog about volunteering and has become more about my mental health than anything else. I am certainly looking at diversifying the content that I put up here to include things that I find interesting (I hope you’re all ready for Nerdpocalypse) but again, lots of it won’t have anything to do with volunteering.

However I have a few projects in the pipeline which will be happening in the next few months and I’m super keen to share the first one with you. I’ll soon be turning 25 years old. A quarter of a century. I’m really lucky that, at this milestone, we generally don’t start to have gammy legs and broken backs. I’m reasonably healthy and able. So for my 25th birthday, my friends and I are coming up with a list of 25 random acts of kindness which we’ll carry out on my actual birthday. 25 is quite a lot and there are only so many hours in the day so we’re looking at doing small, thoughtful gestures. Here’s the list so far:Diem.jpg

  1. A meal for a homeless person
  2. Help an old person/person less physically able with their shopping or cross the road
  3. Sing for the sick
  4. Sing for random people to put a smile on their face. 
  5. Write and distribute positive notes to strangers
  6. Tape some coins to a vending machine for the next person
  7. Give strangers a flower
  8. Pay for a coffee for the next person in the queue
  9. Community clean up
  10. Pop up yoga session for people
  11. Give Blood
  12. Give random people a compliment

We only have 12 things so far so we’re needing lots more! I’m hoping for a huge group of people who can help me tick off every item throughout the day and I’m reaching out to everyone on the internet to help out. It’ll be taking place in London on Sunday September 4th, likely starting from Croydon first thing in the morning. I’ll surely need help carrying things from my  house through Croydon and into London.
If you’re interested at all, just pop a comment down and/or email me. 🙂 I would love to get someone along to help to document the day via video and social media as well.

I’ll be tweeting out using the hashtag #SelflessSunday.

It’s sure to be a Spectacular September Sunday of Successful Selflessness so please join me for part of or all of the day and help me celebrate my birthday in the best flipping way possible!

I hope you’re all feeling happy, healthy and loved.

A

The Generosity of Strangers and the Power of Music.

Posted on by under #cheerupchallenge, Appreciation, Fun, Inspire, Kindness, Life, Mental Health, Music, Volunteer, Volunteering

So if we’re friends on Facebook or if you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I’ve been planning a gig with my friend for the Playing for Change Foundation. We ran the gig on Monday night and it was AMAZING. We gave ourselves (stupidly) only two weeks to plan it. This meant sourcing artists, a venue, negotiating terms with said venue and getting a large enough crowd to make sure that our artists weren’t singing in front of an empty room! Luckily we pulled it off. We found some incredible artists some with powerful voices to get the crowd up on their feet and some with smooth, calming tones perfect for relaxing to. I also ended up singing, partly because we needed more people and also because I love music.

It’s safe to say that I was astounded that these incredible artists were so happy to give up their Monday night (yep, Monday night gig) to perform for us. Some people I’d only met once or twice and some I’d known for a few months. Only Jade, my fellow organiser, had I known for any real length of time. But I knew two out of three of the other performers, not particularly well, but I knew them and I knew they were good people. One is a powerful activist with the voice of an angel, the other is working towards being a counsellor, with so much soul in her voice! The third and fourth, one who I’d only met a couple times and one never before (and Jade) work on a social action programme are powerhouses in work and music. All the people we had involved with the performing side of the gig were involved, in one way or another, in making the world a better place to live in, in creating a more peaceful, healthy, fair and happy society for us and our future generations and I’m so proud and so honoured to have been able to perform alongside these beautiful people.

The crowd were also pretty special. We had way more people come along than we expected. 50+ people, casual acquaintances, friends, friends of friends, complete strangers from upstairs even some of the staff from the pub (more on that later). The people who came primarily were also people working to make the world a better place. Many work in charities, some are nurses, volunteers, campaigners, activists, artists, fellow musicians and everywhere in between. Even if they weren’t working in one of the “social” sectors, the fact that they came along and supported the charity and the gig and us, means they came along to help us change the world.

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Our wonderful Gen, absolutely killing it on stage!

Finally, a huge thank you to the venue. I can’t express to you just how generous these strangers were. We booked the venue on short notice on a night where there are few events. They provided a stage, amps, microphones, stands, stools, extra lamps, tons of extra chairs, a member of staff at our own little bar and a whole host of smiles. A few stick in my mind in particular.

Emmanuel, the bouncer for the night popped in periodically, bringing audience members and listening in. He complimented us all multiple times and I learned that he’s a saxophonist and has been playing for over 17 years.

Rosie, who was working the main bar upstairs, came down before we started and helped us set up the room. This doesn’t sound like much but we asked for the room to be changed multiple times. Sofas moved, stage put out, extra chairs put away then brought back out. She did this all with a huge beautiful smile and she even stayed for a little chat. She’s a good egg despite our indecisiveness and our very particular plans.

Maria, who was our amazing bartender for the night, wasn’t feeling great. But she still worked with another beautiful smile, paid us a heap of compliments and made sure we were all sorted and ready to have a cracking night. I left one of my cables at the venue after Monday and when I went to pick it up, she greeted me with that same infectious smile and told me how glad she was that she worked downstairs for the night. It’s a small gesture on her part but it means the world to me.

On top of their amazing team, they gave us the venue for free. So if you’re ever in the Shoreditch area and are looking for some of the best staff in town and the nicest beer garden ever, go on down to the Water Poet. You won’t regret it.

We couldn’t have achieved any of what we did without the help of amazing artists, volunteers, audience members, venue, staff and supporters from afar so to everyone who came along, thank you for your generosity!

You can still donate to PFC here.

Music is a powerful tool for change and a valuable learning tool for young people and adults alike. Help us spread the message of peace through music.

To hear more music check out my YouTube channel here where I’ll be uploading some videos from the night and follow some of our other singers below. (More to be added in due course).

Kath: @kaffwyatt (tweet her to get her singing more!)

 

Campaign Bootcamp Blues

Posted on by under Adventure, Anxiety, Appreciation, Campaign, Campaign Bootcamp, Change, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Kindness, Life, Little Things, Mental Health, Positivity, Selflessness, Volunteer, Volunteering

So I made it home this morning around 1am after a very long and very tiring week at Campaign Bootcamp. The last two posts I’ve written were written while I was there and they mostly focused on my anxiety and how I was coping with that throughout the week. This post will be slightly different. Campaign Bootcamp is obviously a huge deal. It costs the best part of £3000 to take part per-individual and has training from some of the best campaigners around. It’s also in massively high demand with around 250 applicants and only 34-ish places. So in appreciation of this great training and community, here are the top 4 things that I’ve taken away from the week.

1. Knowledge

Okay, so this one is a bit of a cheat. Knowledge is super broad and you do learn something new every day but I’m talking about vast amounts of knowledge and information. Whether it was about values, theories of change, other world issues or existing campaigns, I learned more than I expected to. Lots of that knowledge came from within the group itself and it was all made so accessible for the less experienced campaigners in the room. So even though it might seem like a bit of a cheat, it’s important to remember that knowledge is power. The more you know…

Learning outdoors in the sun is the best way to do it. 

 2. A Kick Up The Arse

When I arrived at the training we all had to introduce ourselves for one minute. And while everyone else went up and spoke about themselves and all the campaigning that they do, I spoke more about the fact that I wasn’t currently a campaigner. I’m more of a teacher, instructor and supporter. However, now that I’ve spent the week with some of the most ridiculously experienced and passionate campaigners there are, I feel like I’ve been given renewed energy for running campaigns rather than just supporting them. Keep your eyes peeled for more. 
A nice chat by Shami Chakrabarti was certainly… Sharmi-ng! HEYOHHHHHHH!

 3. Resilience

The first two days were particularly difficult for me this week. I am not a huge fan of meeting new people, especially all at once in a place where I’m not comfortable! I had to take myself away for an hour or so, the first few evenings to recover a little from panic attacks. I was very close to leaving and not coming back. However, everyone was so supportive and so open and welcoming. I also remembered over and over about the opportunity and how hard it is to get on to bootcamp. I resolved to stay, even if I didn’t speak to anyone the rest of the week, I would stay. I even managed to put up with all the forced dancing!
A circle of dancing. Not tribal at all.
Luckily, MJ had a ukulele so I managed to feel better pretty swiftly. But I really had to work to stay there and be resilient. If I hadn’t forced myself out of my comfort zone I’d have missed out on some of the greatest people I’ve ever met! 

 4. People

I wanted to learn a lot and start putting things in to practice in my own life, work and campaigning. I met some of the most incredible people this past week. I knew calibre was going to be high when I walked into that room and I knew there would be people with more years of experience than I’d been alive for. I even got to meet and have lunch with Shami Chakrabarti.
What I really wasn’t expecting was to feel such love and warmth from people I’d only just met. Throughout the week I got talking to a bunch of people about everything they’ve been doing and why they do what they do but also about what they love to do when they’re not working or campaigning. 
Even besides that, there were some people who I was able to mess around with for no reason. People I was able to complain to/with. People who I was able to avoid dancing with. The culture was incredible and I knew at any point I could walk up to anyone and start a conversation with someone without feeling like I was being a pain in the arse. 
A little camp fire quiz session with Olivia the quiz master. 

So despite the rocky start and the crazy brain making things just that little bit harder, I’m glad I got on to Campaign Bootcamp, I’m glad I stuck it out and I’m so glad to have met everyone that I did. I’m actually feeling a bit lost without 30+ people around me at all times but I’m making the most of it by watching Blue Planet.

Oriana and Dora, the best buddies a guy could ask for!

Finally, Rachel, Tamara-Jade –

Don’t Complain, Campaign.

Posted on by under Campaign, Change, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Kindness, Life, Little Things, Mental Health, People, Social, Volunteer, Volunteering

So it’s the time of the year where giving is encouraged. Times are hard right now and the news, media, papers, magazines are all awash with stories of woe, things that need to be changed. There are a lot of issues out there that need people working on to make sure that our country and our society changes for the better.

There are a bunch of things that I’m passionate about and lots of issues that I’m eager to tackle in anyway my time and energy will allow. For example, mental health. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I’m keen to get people talking about mental health. Trying to take power away from mental illnesses by acknowledging that they’re just a small part of what makes us who we are. I’m constantly planning, brainstorming and talking to others about potential campaigns that I could run to potentially tackle the issue and I feel like in my own very small way I’m already campaigning for change.

Lots of people, however, are what some call Armchair Activists or Slacktivists.

Urban Dictionary define an Armchair Activist as:

“One who sits in their armchair or desk chair and blogs or posts Activists issues on facebook without ever really doing anything about said issues or exercising any form of activism as it would require that person to actually leave the armchair.”

Wikipedia defines Slacktivism as:

“The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it take satisfaction from the feeling they have contributed.”

I’ve been guilty of being a slacktivist before. Occasionally I still feel like one. However, I often get feedback about my efforts in trying to get people to talk about mental health and it helps me realise that even my small little blog and the openness in which I talk about my own mental problems and encourage people to do the same is helping a them come to terms with the hand that’s been dealt to them. This isn’t me tooting my own horn, or blowing smoke up my own chimney or another way of saying that I’m showing off. All I’m trying to do is show people that it’s not as hard as it sounds to campaign for something you care about. There are small things you can do, like blog and talk and share your story or the story of others (who are happy for you to do so). It might not feel like you’re campaigning, but at the very least, you’re laying the groundwork for a campaign. 
I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are motivated enough to campaign about the things that matter the most to them, even though sometimes they work themselves to sickness! 
The message I’m trying to get across in this post is as the title says. Don’t just whine about the issues that you’re upset about. Get up out of your armchair or desk chair or sofa and do something about it.
If you’re interested in running your own campaign check out these links.
vinspired.com/cashpoint
Alternatively, search for an existing campaign and volunteer for that. Chances are, there are tons of campaigns that people have already started which would be happy to have some willing volunteers! 🙂 
SO
Don’t complain, campaign. 
A

The Three Amigos – Journey to the Best

Posted on by under Change, Friends, General Ranting, Grateful, Happiness, Volunteer, Work

So, what the hell do I want to do with my life?
I’m Jade and this is my story so far…

Having spent four years at university studying Music Performance, I thought it was a complete waste of time and money. I love music and believed that university was the only way to get into that industry. But when I wrote my dissertation I thought “hang on, I just proved to myself that I could get into the industry without doing a degree”. I spoke to lots of people in the industry, the majority of whom got to where they want to be without getting a degree first. I had to go through my degree to realise that this wasn’t the only way to get to where I want to be. I’ve spoken to loads of people who have been trying to get into the industry, they asked me how I got the job at the Think Big Hub and I really wanted to tell them that degrees aren’t the only way to get into the creative industries. It really gets me aggy thinking about it!

As long as you’re passionate, are willing to volunteer and  get the unpaid experience, it gets you so much further than if you just have a piece of paper. No one has ever asked me for that piece of paper. Unless you absolutely need a degree to go into a career you should consider alternatives. I’m not knocking university, I learned a lot about myself there and it was great for me on a personal development level, but career-wise, not so much. I did also get a lot of events experience there, which I may not have got my current job without. I have thoroughly mixed feelings about university. Degrees prove a certain type of intelligence. Lots of people are viewed as stupid if they don’t go to university, but people forget about the other types of intelligence. For example, hard work, grafting and moving up the scale.

Now that I’ve got some experience in the events industry it’s helped me a lot as it’s helped me get experience to move on to start a career rather than just looking for jobs. After however many years of “education” it took this 4 month internship to help me narrow down exactly what I’d like to do. I always knew I wanted to work with music but this has confirmed my choices for me.

So, Anisa, what the hell do you want to do with your life?

Well, I spent a whole year applying for uni and from age 5 I always thought that I wanted to go to uni to study maths. About two weeks before results day (or D-day) I sat down with my family who told me “you don’t have to go to university if you don’t want to”. In that split second I decided that I didn’t want to go which was really strange for me as I thought I’d always wanted to go. From then my plan of action was to look for apprenticeships and jobs but a lot of the jobs I was looking at required lots of office experience, so I decided to go for an apprenticeship. On results day I realised that I could have got into uni and I declined my uni place. I was a bit upset but I thought I could pay £18k for uni or I could spend time earning that money.

I got a call from Future UnLtd telling me that they had an opportunity for me, within a week after that, I had an interview with them and then another with Think Big and I found out that I had an apprenticeship. This was all really fast paced and from the 3rd of September I started with Think Big as a business admin apprentice. No one expected me to get an apprenticeship that quickly, myself included. It was a fantastic boost for me and my own confidence.

The youth sector wasn’t ever a path I expected to take but it’s given me experience in different sectors and while I’ve been set in my ways to go into corporate and mathematics, but this has made me an all rounder. I’m going to finish my apprenticeship and see how it comes. Things are always changing. Myself included.

So, Alex, what the hell do you want to do with your life?

Well, my life has had a series of twists, turns and unexpected events. I followed my family’s wishes and went through the education system. I was awful in my A-Levels and ended up having to do an extra year in college. Eventually I got into university and went to Birmingham City for a year. I hated it. I left and ended up training as a chef for a year. While I was working and studying, I volunteered.

This was a turning point for me. I have suffered with depression for a long long time and volunteering helped me and is still helping me recover. I fell in love with the sector and was lucky enough to volunteer with a gent named Pete and eventually got the job I’m in now.

It’s a short version of my story, but I’ll upload my full story of self soon. Much like Anisa and Jade, I never intended to work in the sector. Unlike them both, this, at the moment, looks like the sector I want to stay in. Experience is what I want, returning to my previous role in community organising as a full time employee is what I’m hoping for one day once I build up my resilience, experience and knowledge.

A big thanks to Jade and Anisa for joining me on the ol’ bloggosphere today! #Collaboration #TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork #DreamTeam

The Volunteer Effect

Posted on by under Change, Happiness, Positivity, Reflection, Selflessness, Success, Time, Volunteer, Volunteering

In the jobs and volunteer roles that I have had I’ve noticed a definite shift in various aspects of my life and the lives of those around me. We don’t always realise how much things have changed until you just stop for a second and reflect on the years gone by! I’ve spent my weekend off thinking about all the things that have made me who I am today. A lot of these changes have come in the last few years and I’m sure they’re going to have a huge impact on my life from here on out.

A lot of these changes came about after I started to volunteer and since I started, I’ve felt a definite shift to the positive for various reasons. I wrote a blog on my LinkedIn profile about the benefits of volunteering recently, you can have a read here.
The benefits that I’ve written about in that blog are due to the Volunteer Effect. Volunteering effects people in different ways. For some, like myself, it has a profound effect on everything that I do.

The volunteer effect has made me consider the people around me before I do things. Even the little things, like whether or not I wash up, or what kind of food I eat in the office (I try not to eat overly smelly food!).

I was a very different person years ago, I was rude, obnoxious and generally not a very nice person. This is going back to secondary school. Some people say it was just a phase of teenage years and that’s fine. A lot of teenagers act out, but I don’t feel like I should have used it as an excuse. Between 2008 and 2012, after leaving my secondary school, I endeavoured to change who I was for the better. Stop stropping, be nicer and less of a drag on the people around me.

It’s only when I started to volunteer after dropping out of uni did I feel like I was succeeding. Not only were my decisions affected, my mood improved and I was excited to do stuff. All kinds of stuff, whether it was voluntary, work, social, everything seemed better. Despite volunteering for causes which were shocking, unjust and heart breaking the main thing that helped me see things differently were the people I met along the way. All these people working their arses off to help and I could see the smiles on their faces while they were doing it.

The Volunteer Effect for me is hard to describe with words, it’s benefiting me in so many ways (which I believe is best described in my LinkedIn post above) while I’m benefiting others and hopefully they go on to pay it forward. For me, the Volunteer Effect is simple, it’s a chain reaction of good. To finish, have a little look see at the image below. This, to me really embodies what volunteers do for the world. They want to make people happy. It’s just a bonus that it usually makes them happy too.

A