My volunteering experience
For our response to the task ‘get people to give more’, our group are all taking part with a different way of giving something. I am writing about my experience as a young adult leader at a Girl Guiding group. Before moving to Leeds, I volunteered every Tuesday night at 1st Locking Stumps Guides for three years, helping to plan and run the meetings as well as camps and trips. As well as this, I also helped with the fundraising events and applying for grants.
I do think I help out for mainly selfish reasons; as well as really enjoying it, volunteering has provided me with many amazing opportunities I couldn’t have experienced otherwise. I have been on many trips, and will even be travelling abroad this year; also, I have been able to attend exclusive events, that wouldn’t be available to the general public. It is great to see the girls looking up to you as a role model and knowing that they trust you, and you are genuinely helping them and teaching them new things. At the same time, I feel I have learnt a lot through my experiences. It makes me feel good about myself knowing that my free time is not wasted but that it is really appreciated by the girls as well as the other leaders of the group. I like the responsibility, as well as being treated like an adult and respected.
As well as helping out, there are events organised where I get to meet other volunteers from different groups, so I have made lots of new friends through guiding. I think I also help out as I feel attached to the group, as it is the guide group I was in when I was younger, so I already knew the leaders, and also, I wanted others to be able to have the experiences I had. I have written about my volunteering on my CV and my personal statement when applying to university, but I wouldn’t say that furthering my career was a motive at all for me to volunteer.
It is really easy to get involved and I would definitely recommend it, and volunteers are always needed as Girl Guiding is such a big organisation. I feel like giving my time is much more valuable that giving away money. All that is needed is a CRB check, first aid training, and then basic leader training, which you do alongside helping out. The only downside is that people often get me confused for one of the guides as I look the same age as most of them!
Kirsty will be giving blood, and Matt has signed up to be an organ donar.
Questionnaire
This is the questionnaire that we printed out and handed around our class, as students are our target audience. We got 26 replies.
1. In your free time do you feel you use it productively?
Yes [5] No [12] Sometimes [9]
How many hours of your free time do you think you waste in one day?
One [2] Two [5] Three [4] Four [6] Five+ [9]
3. Do you give to charity?
Yes [6] No [10] Sometimes [10]
Yes [23] No [1] Sometimes [2]
6. Do you know where your local Charity shops are?
Yes [19] No [7]
7. If so do you ever donate anything to them?
Yes [11] No [15]
8. Are you an organ or blood donor?
Organ [3] Blood [5] Both [2] No [15]
9. If not, is it something you are interested in?
Yes [10] No [6] Not Sure [3] N/A [7]
10. Would any of these different ways of giving to charity appeal to you, if so which ones?
. Giving Clothes [23]
. Giving unwanted items such as technology, books and games? [18]
. Giving blood [17]
. Signing up for organ donation [12]
. Giving away some artwork to generate donations [18]
. Donating time to volunteer [10]
. Using your skills to teach [11]
. Helping with sporting activities for children [9]
. Playing internet charity games [7]
. Other - please state [0]
Results
All of the questions were answered with one word answers, except from the following question, where we received a variety of responses.
What sort of things do you fill your time with?
- Talking/socialising [11], watching films [3], watching tv [9], going out, eating [2], drinking [1], listening to music [2], playing music [3], playing computer games [3], going on the internet [4], facebook [4], messing about [1], reading [2], work [5], hobbies[1], interests [1], phone conversations/skype [2], cleaning car [1], drawing [2]
From the results I have come to that conclusion that students do not want to give money to charity, but would like to help in some way, but just haven't felt motivated to do so yet, as they waste a lot of time. This suggests that our idea of helping to show students how they could spend their time for a better use is a good idea, and is needed. The things that people are most interested in to do with helping charities are giving blood, donating artwork, signing up to donate organs and to donate clothes.
Charity Shop Research
Kirsty and Steph went into town to find our local charity shops. We found that there were only four charity shops in the centre of Leeds that were easily accessible to students, Scope on the headrow is a charity shop for cerebral palsy, we asked the lady who worked there a few questions:
"How often do people come in and donate things?"
"Nearly everyday"
"What is the main age group that donates to the shop?"
"It varies from young people to older people"
"What are the main things that are donated?"
"Clothing"
"What would be useful to have donated more?"
"Anything except electrical items, as we have no one to test them"
We also found a British Heart Foundation charity shop, which is opposite the city markets. They mainly sold clothing and brick a brack. Next to the BHF charity shop there was the RSPCA charity shop, again they had a lot of clothing, but we also found downstairs that they accepted furniture for donation, which was different from the other charity shops. There used to be an Oxfam round the corner from these two charity shops but we found that it had been closed down for about a week and the closest one was now Headingley or Moortown.
