Volunteering in the community is a very nice way of helping others, and it has its own rewards - not in any monetary sense but in that warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when you know a job has been well done, or you helped an old lady across the road. You get the picture. Altruistic pleasure. It's a good thing.
I love to see those TV programmes where you have a whole community coming together and planting vegetables on verges outside houses for communal consumption, or there is a working bee to tidy someones garden - you know the kind of thing
Our state in Australia has the oddest phenomenon. Ambulance Attendants (we'll call them attendants for want of a better name - could be driver, medical assistant or whatever) and Firemen are often but not always unpaid volunteers. In a country where we have a relatively small population and seem to pay an inordinate amount of taxes it seems surprising that such important professions - for they are really professions in all meanings of the term - are filled by unpaid volunteers. For those that want to do it and get their rewards from participation and job well done - I applaude your efforts, but I do find it a little strange that in a so called civilised country we rely on the kindness of those donating their time to get such jobs done - and lets not quibble that in the main either position might not provide the best of times for anyone willing to risk their life and possibly mental wellbeing to attend a call out. PTSD could well be a factor at some point during the life of an unpaid volunteer, as it could with a paid counterpart, but how is this possibility dealt with in either case?
I heard recently that cancers 'caused by' or due to factors experienced by paid fire service employees could be treated freely under a workers compensation agreement negotiated in the pay conditions of an employee. Volunteers were not eligible under the same agreement. What? Yes - CFS and MFS fight the same fires and are exposed to the same conditions - one is a paid profession the other a volunteer unit, yet one gets their compensation, the other doesn't. Somehow this shouldn't be allowed. In Tasmania, there is no such demarcation, and all firefighters are eligible. Paid firefighters in Tasmania make up just 6% of the entire firefighting force. I suspect the numbers are similar in other parts of the country.
And so to volunteer fatigue -
As there is no cash payment for volunteering, and yet much of our society seems to rely on people doing things out of the goodness of their hearts, one couldn't possibly expect too much from a volunteering peer. Having been a member of a couple of volunteer organisation committees it's never easy to encourage new volunteers and a well meaning group can often lose focus and the volunteers lose interest and drift away. Bullying doesn't work - I have seen other community organisations run like a finely tuned engine where those in command run rough shod over their minions - but not for long, as people will soon tire of working hard for someone else to take the credit.
In a society where we are taught that everyone has an 'angle' and no one does anything for nothing without some kind of payment - in kind or otherwise - it is increasingly difficult to get people off their bums and out of doors to do something to help their fellow man.
Apathy seems to be on the increase and although many people want the government, local council or whomever to sort out their problems, it's just "not their job", and community then seems to suffer..
I recently organised a presentation to our community association from the grafitti and crime prevention people at our local council. From a comittee of 10 people in a community of 450 houses we had 5 people turn out. The event had been organised after quite a large amount of tagging/grafitti had been done locally, and a couple of residents were keen to find out what could be done (by the council) to fix their problem, so we publicised it locally, and it was a really interesting presentation. Regrettably hardly anyone attended. The rest were all probably at home watching 'the voice' or 'masterchef'. Exciting stuff.......
So what's the point of having a community association and trying to get people to volunteer if they aren't interested in the community, their neighbours or keeping the place a nice place to live? Why should we bother to try and set a good example to our youth and instill some good core values?
One day you might need to use the emergency services and if there's no one volunteering to do the dirty jobs, you might just be stuck on the road in a vehicle accident, whilst others rubberneck past wondering whose job it is to fix someone elses problem.
