YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
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Thursday Feb 19, 2009
Getting my hands dirty...
Since moving to London I have been working with volunteers; young people who want to work with YouthNet as Peer Advisors in the relationships section of askTheSite. However I've only met about 12 of them face to face. The same goes with the partners we work with; I have emailed and spoken on the phone to many of our charity partners and freelance advisors but only met a few of them in person. Given that some of them are based in Australia and New York as well as Brighton, Manchester, Norfolk and Sheffield, it's not that surprising. And the online nature of the job means that we can all work together providing answers on askTheSite despite being from different towns and countries.
It's great to be able to provide online opportunities like this, but I was reminded of the benefits and joys of volunteering when I took a day's leave from YouthNet to volunteer for ecoActive - a charity which provides environmental and sustainability education for both primary and secondary school children as well as teacher training and community education in Hackney, Enfield and Haringey. The ecoActive project seems like a great one (even if their website could use some work) - and, with only two full time members of staff, it relies on volunteers and session workers to run its activities and projects. I spent the day getting messy in sludge when making recycled paper, piling up manure and sand and adding worms to make a wormery and teaching others how to reuse tetrapacks to make wallets, magazines to make beads and newspapers to make gift bags.
As someone who spends their days working at a keyboard, it was wonderful to be able to get my hands dirty and work with young people in the same room as me. Working online has the advantages of being able to connect and liaise with a huge variety of people, but denies you the pleasure of holding something in your hand. I got a great sense of satisfaction from actually creating something tangible, helping others do the same and see the immediate impact of the work I was doing on peoples' faces.
On the other hand, for those who spend their days attending lectures, working in banks, teaching or looking after babies (as some of our volunteers do) volunteering for YouthNet must provide this variety in the opposite way - a chance to get away from their lives, put down whatever they are holding in their hands and engage in something completely different, and often quite challenging, online. And we couldn't answer all our relationships questions without them.
Sometimes, swapping your time and skills for experience and a CV boost can be the main benefit of taking up a volunteer position - but swapping your time and skills for simply some variety, interest and enjoyment is not to be underestimated!
Friday Feb 13, 2009
Volunteering Hinterland
There's a volunteering hinterland coming into view. Much discussion and buzz has been created about the social impacts that the latest developments and changes on the 'interweb' are having as they seem to almost take place in front of your eyes (see Beth Kanter for a great example). Yesterday's Twestival, a Twitter-inspired fundraiser that knows no national frontiers, has been just the latest in this growing trend.
Volunteering and other social action just got easier to paraphrase Clay Shirky, author of the brilliant "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations". It might have got easier to form groups and take action, but it's also true that with the web playing a greater role, the totality of smaller scale social action is more and more visible like never before.
Before the web, small scale local social action was only really visible on a local level. Now, this local action is visible globally, thanks to the web and the advance of social media. Twestival demonstrated the power of volunteering and inspired social action- in particular local and more informal volunteering.
The question is: whether more specialised web platforms develop with an eye to social action and volunteering, or whether it will continue to be the most widely adopted social media that sets the pace in tomorrow's social action and volunteering.
Friday Feb 06, 2009
Blogging about blogging
When YouthNet took a leap of faith all those years ago and headed out on the bloggers' journey, we had no idea where it would take us. We knew where we didn't want to go and our Public Relations Manager certainly knew where they didn't want it to go. We knew we didn't want it to be top down or just about marketing a brand.
Over the years different members of staff have taken the opportunity to shout about their own personal bugbears and argue a point of view. Others have used it to debate the topical and we really appreciate the contribution of all those who've commented and joined in the discussion.
Now it's time for a rethink. Today together with YouthNetters with talk and the blog, so in a way it's only appropriate to blog about the talk. Watch out this space for new bloggers and more discussion! As they say on Twitter - thanks for the follow.
Tuesday Feb 03, 2009
Snow day 2009
Yesterday, it snowed. In fact, the news tells us this morning, that on Monday 2 February 2009, London experienced the heaviest snowfall in 18 years.
Now, 18 years ago, I was at primary school and living in a country where it never snowed (at least at my place). However, I can still say with a fair amount of confidence that the working world has changed quite a bit since 1991.
I woke up yesterday morning and turned on my laptop. This is a fairly regular morning ritual – only yesterday, the weather report on my desktop said it was snowing. I looked outside the window and so it was. Then the text messages started arriving, saying that, if we couldn't get in, we could work at home – and a webmail message from the chief executive saying the same.
Working from home is nothing too unusual in 2009. Due to the wonders of broadband internet, I've got access to webmail and the documents I need from any computer with an up-to-date browser. To see what my colleagues are up to, all I need to do is turn on Yammer, or follow their twitter feeds, or send a text message or email.
So, working from home in 2009 is relatively easy. However, working from home on a snow day in 2009 raises a few more issues. And to make things even more difficult, YouthNet has a stand at Skills North West this week – which involved four staff members needing to overcome the public transport chaos to get up north to Bolton.
That's when I noticed that snow has an impact on technology as well. The South West Trains website wouldn't work. The front page of the Virgin Trains website said 'There is currently a good service on all Virgin Trains routes', which seemed pretty unlikely. My mobile stopped ringing: all calls went straight to voice mail. And when I tried to call our travellers, I got a network busy message. So technology's not the answer to everything. Sometimes we still have to wait on hold for half an hour on the Virgin Rail helpline to see if we can change the times of train tickets (I couldn't). And sometimes, we just need have to travel through the snow to the station, talk to someone face-to-face and ask again (this worked).
In contrast, social networking websites come into their own on a snow day. In between writing reports and answering phone calls, it was lovely to see the snowy pictures which had been uploaded by my friends on facebook, by users on flickr and to read the #uksnow reports coming on twitter.
Walking through the common in the evening, throwing snowballs, making snow angels and taking my own pictures, my thoughts turned to how things have changed over the last 18 years.
How the new communications technologies can connect us and make us aware of the bigger picture. And how this has far wider implications than snow.
Posted by Natasha Judd ( 1:22 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
