By Muhammod Abu Sayed
Volunteering
By Mary-Jo Appaqaq
When was the last time you volunteered? Back in my day, one of the requirements to graduate high school was to clock up 40 hours of volunteer work. The trouble is, many work environments have strict regulations when it comes to having underage workers on-site, so the “opportunities” were quite… shall we say, dull.
I remember sitting in a dingy, dusty office with a very official-seeming lady, who was flipping through a binder of laminated sheets of paper. This went on for quite some time, with her seeming to ignore me while I anxiously waited for instructions. I was 15 at the time, and didn’t really know anything about a workplace. She found the section of pages she was looking for, handed me the binder and instructed me to read.
We sat there in silence while she watched me read, and after about 5 minutes, she said “Welllll?”.
I snapped to attention, not understanding the question.
She rolled her eyes at my blank, deer-in-headlights expression and said “Which one would you like to do?”
I hadn’t grasped that I was meant to be choosing a volunteering position, so I hastily pointed to the last thing I had been reading. Dispatch at the General Hospital.
“Dispatch?” She said with her eyebrows raised.
“Yes. Dispatch sounds good.” I lied. I had no idea what dispatch meant, but I was keen to not look like an idiot to the official lady.
“Ok, I will send your paperwork to the hospital and they will contact you with your first shift.”
And that’s how I ended up spending 40 mind-numbing hours in a tiny, windowless room, staring at a rotary phone, praying it didn’t ring. Needless to say, this put a bad taste in my mouth for volunteering, despite the fact that I had actually done a fair amount of volunteer work with my family in the past.
My family used to volunteer at a restaurant on Christmas Day, serving food for those who couldn’t afford a meal, or who simply didn’t have anyone to share the meal with and didn’t want to sit alone indoors all day. That restaurant was a popular steak house in my hometown. I suspect the owner’s motivations for running this every year were partly fuelled by the fact that he was a workaholic, preferring to be at work than waste a day at home, and also so he could proudly display a sign outside that said “Open 365 Days A Year!”.
And that little volunteering job is how I got my first paying job. Volunteering on Christmas Day turned into me becoming the first “Salad Girl” (I cringe at the title now) at that steakhouse. I turned the salad section into a proper section, and was eventually promoted to a line cook. This kickstarted my career in hospitality.
Volunteering really is a great way to get your foot in the door with local business owners, network with others in your community and add a fresh, new section to your CV. With that in mind, the E&P department has been working hard to find the best local volunteering gigs in the community. Our first outing was for Ilford InGreen on the 11th of June!
If you’re interested in coming along for our next volunteering trip, contact the E&P department to register your interest. You never know where it could lead!
