A NEW APPROACH TO VOLUNTEETING

Margo Uprichard is Training and Development Worker with the Transformation Team. The primary goal of enlisting volunteers is to develop and build relationships across faith and economic lines --- quite different from the way we regard volunteers in the U.S. where we try to enlist someone to accomplish a task that needs to be done. Here, in Scotland, volunteers and projects are matched up with each other in a way that will be beneficial to both. Imagine, for example, connecting people with a successful employment history with projects operating in the poorest neighborhoods and supporting the two to work together so that tasks are completed, skills are transferred, insight is gained into the injustice and the challenges of poverty. Thus, people are given an opportunity to live out their faith in a very practical sense. The relationship supports each to grow in self-understanding, confidence and appreciation of the other.

Within the poorest areas self-esteem can be very low among residents, many of whom have never worked, and the move to volunteering can be the first step up the ladder to employment. People who don't recognize their own talents and skills and so feel ill-equipped to even consider employment, come to appreciate they have much to offer.

The national drive for helping people overcome exclusion from main stream society and set them on the road to employment is funded in part by the Scottish government's volunteer strategy, and this is actively encouraged by reimbursing volunteers's travel expenses, other out-of-pocket exenses and in some cases child care. The government also largely funds Volunteer Development Scotland, an umbrella organization established in 1984 and recognized as a center of excellence in all matters related to volunteering in Scotland.

Once a volunteer has registered with the Transformation Team, a program of mentoring and monitoring is put in place to support the relationship with the project and intervening when it makes sense to do so.

There are many more aspects of the volunteering process that I will write about later, as I learn more.