Hot
Topic Archive
December
2007
Can
we turn the clock back just a little please?
By
OzVPM Director Andy
Fryar
I
have had the privilege of wandering through Europe
over the past month and have seen many amazing things
along the way - age old architecture, iconic sites,
priceless artefacts and cultures very different from
my own.
Being
Australian, I see things from my own perspective and
more often than not, I find myself marvelling at those
small day to day differences that others take for
granted. The way a waiter finalises your account while
you are still sitting at your table in Germany, the
fact that you often pay a higher fee for sitting outside
a Paris café on the pavement edge or the ease at which
local people can find their way around the underground
of their respective cities. These types of differences
occur wherever you travel and help remind you that
you are not at home.
This
trip however, I was particularly interested to find
myself in several cities which almost transported
me back in time to an Australia of my childhood.
• Seeing
people smoking openly in restaurants throughout Europe
is not something I’ve witnessed for many years in
Australia.
• Bicycle
riders happily peddling through city streets with
no helmet adorning their great noggins.
• Beer
being sold in corner stores in full view of minors.
• Fireworks
being set off on Guy Faulks night.
These
are all things which we have legislated against in
Australia or sanitised over recent years for the apparent
safety of those of us living in this country.
So
is Australia a safer place without these things or
have we simply pandered to the voice of a vocal minority?
Well
I am quite sure that statistics could be produced
to show marked declines in the effects of passive
smoking as well as the rates of head injury, firework
accidents and youth drinking in Australian society
as a direct result of these decisions, but I guess
the bigger question is whether or not Australia is
a better place because of it all? After witnessing
all these things in Europe, I actually came away feeling
that in Australia we are perhaps a little too sanitised
and that we may have actually lost some of our freedoms
and liberties, slowly and gradually over the years,
under the guise of creating safer communities.
NOW
what the heck does all this have to do with a hot
topic on volunteer management I hear you ask?
Well
as I pondered these things, I couldn’t help but to
make some direct comparisons with the profession of
volunteer program management.
This
became particularly pronounced as I met with several
people this trip who coordinate the efforts of volunteers
in significant volunteer involving agencies, individuals
who have been managing volunteers for many years,
but who have never called it that – and who are quite
unaware that volunteer management is something that
others aspire to having a career in. They haven’t
‘studied it’ at University, are unaware of the myriad
of guide books to ‘best practice’ and have little
or no knowledge of professional Associations like
AAVA (Australasian Association of Volunteer Administrators).
Effectively
they coordinate the efforts of volunteers based on
common sense principles and an innate understanding
of what motivates people to want to help one other.
It is volunteer management at its most grassroots
level, the type we more commonly associate with the
small community efforts of all volunteer groups –
without the theory or rhetoric which can so easily
bog us down in our day to day work.
Is
this a risky management strategy? Sure it is. But
there are risks involved in every aspect of life and
the truth is that when we over compensate to minimise
risk, more often than not the very nature of the activity
changes to become something else.
Let’s
go back to my earlier observations about bicycle riding
in Paris. Not wearing helmets is a risk, no doubt
about it. But having no helmet laws has also meant
that the French have been able to develop and implement
a low cost bicycle hire system throughout the city
which allows users to simply pick up and drop off
bikes from hundreds of bike stands around the streets
of Paris. This in turn stops traffic congestion, avoids
parking problems and is environmentally friendly.
Ingenious!
Here’s
another story. More than a decade ago, I remember
a baby being taken from a South Australian hospital
by a volunteer - a terrible story that luckily, in
this case, had a happy ending. But how did the SA
government of the day respond? By overcompensating
of course! Not only did they insist that all new hospital
based volunteers needed to be screened, they also
requested that this be done retrospectively on every
volunteer already working in the system – even little
old ladies in hospital Auxiliaries who had been there
for 50 years! While the latter stipulation was eventually
dropped (after the protest of volunteer managers including
myself), screening in hospitals in this country has
become commonplace ever since.
OK
let me get to the point.
Involving
volunteers has many benefits. For our communities,
our organisations, broader society and also for the
volunteers we engage in those activities. Volunteering
has also been with us forever, it is just that today
we title it, pack guidelines around it and all too
often have a tendency to operate from a ‘worse case’
scenario mentality. I’ve met many volunteer managers
over the years that appear to have some sort of a
robotic obedience to ‘the rules’, an apparently uncompromising
set of volunteer management principles that can never
be waivered from.
If
my many years in this field have taught me anything,
it is this. Just when you think you have seen everything
– think again! There is NO one set of rules for all
volunteer managers to work by because our programs
serve such a broad and diverse set of consumers and
needs in so many different settings that there is
literally a limitless number of practices going on
in our field.
Now,
as one of those people who write the guide manuals
to good volunteer involvement, let me assure you I
am not suggesting we throw sensible precautions out
the window as the safety of our volunteers and clients
must always be a paramount consideration.
What
I am wanting for us to consider is:
• Just
how far can we go with wrapping volunteer involvement
up in cotton wool?
• At
what point do we become so prescriptive with our programs
that we miss potentially great opportunities (like
the bike riders of France), or worse still, become
completely ineffective in meeting the needs that our
organisations were established to fill in the first
place?
• Is
it too late to turn the clock back just a little?
Let’s
hear what you think?
It's
not too late to...
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