Why is it so difficult to become a volunteer? January 27, 2010

As January is typically a month in which I try to feel virtuous ad be good I thought that this would be a good time to try item 17 of my list – “do some charity work”.

I’m particularly interested in doing this at the moment because two of my close family members have received help from charities and it seemed like I needed to give something back to the people who helped them.

I choose mental illness and leukemia charities as my focus and then started to research. Despite my initial optimism, I found that it is surprisingly hard to become a person who does charity work; instead of following my misinformed dreams that I would just walk into an intensely rewarding and interesting position, charity work seemed to involve more filling in of application forms than actual volunteering. During this month I have filled in over 20 applications for placements on do-it.org and timebank.com (I had to widen my choice of charities as it appears that the conditions that effect the widest strata of the population are also the ones supported in the most bureaucratic manner), most of which got sent to the same volunteering office anyway. Following this I got an email to come to a volunteer evening a few weeks away to discuss what was available. Which made me wonder, what’s the point in having an online application process if what you put into it makes no difference to your application at all?

I also just started sourcing charities off the internet and writing to them directly but have mainly been ignored. In one case I got an email back saying thanks for the kind thoughts but they “simply have more volunteers than we need”. I am not, it seems, the only person who has decided that they must do some good.

So instead of fulfilled I feel frustrated. How can I help? Can I even help anyone? Is it possible to be a volunteer and hold down a demanding full-time job? Or is my idea of helping ease some of the problems of London’s fast living just a utopian dream?

If anyone knows anything about this and could guide me a bit your help would be gratefully appreciated!

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