Volunteering

[God]

What voluntary work have you done? If you haven't done any, would you like to do any? What kind of voluntary work interests you?

I've volunteered to work at a centre where food is dispensed to refugees living in my town. They aren't homeless but struggle to afford food so the centre provides aid for them during times of need. The way I got to volunteering was by visiting my local Connexions centre whom I asked about voluntary work. They put me in contact with Millennium Volunteers (www.millenniumvolunteers.org.uk), an organisation operating all over the UK, who have a broad range of activity to get involved in.

[Hypnotica_Gaze]

Yep done a fair bit of volunteer work thanks to someone i knew at the start who was a psychologist/mental health professional getting me involved.
Liked some places more than others, but just because of the way things were run, some had better systems for making certain cases a priority etc, some people cared more than others and the like.
My voluntary work has mainly been counselling.

[peegai]

I'm a volunteer for Bristol's only hospice organisation, St Peter's Hospice. It's a place where people with uncurable illnesses are cared for. I work as volunteer for one of their shop branches and as a volunteer gardener for the hospice in the Knowle area (there's another one, and that's in Brentry).

[Hypnotica_Gaze]

 

[Postperson]

Done lots.

[Pyraxis]

I used to volunteer with a food bank, helped out with Sunday school classes, was a French-immersion classroom aide.

More recently though I've done career-related stuff, working at film festivals and a graphics conference.

[Hypnotica_Gaze]

What type of voluntary work did you do PP?
Did you enjoy it?

Pyraxis, cool my mums friend does a fair bit of work at various film festivals,
what does your job entail if you dont mind me asking?

[McGiver]

i have but i don't want to talk about it because i want my karma to come in other forms other than from praises by other people.



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[Pyraxis]

Pyraxis, cool my mums friend does a fair bit of work at various film festivals,
what does your job entail if you dont mind me asking?

Actually as of a week ago I don't have a job, because the current project just ended and I haven't found another position yet. But while I was there, I did troubleshooting of renders (tell me know much you know about computer graphics, if you care, so I know how technical to make this), supervising render wranglers, and writing small perl programs to help with production (like specialized find-and-replace for quickly changing render settings in a rib file). I also got to do a bit of lighting/compositing, placing the lights of various colors and intensities in the 3D scene and then rendering out and splicing together all the layers (background, each character, various shadow and reflection passes, AOV's etc).

[Hypnotica_Gaze]

Did you find the voluntary work you did rewarding Mcjagger?, you dont need to go into details if you dont want, just a yes or no, did you find it a positive experience?

Pyraxis do you enjoy the type of work you do, or is it just a way to make some cash?

[McGiver]

not really, i am pretty selfish about my time.

[Pyraxis]

Pyraxis do you enjoy the type of work you do, or is it just a way to make some cash?

Cash and industry contacts were what that job was about. I hate to say it, because I do adore CG (shader writing, modeling, lighting), just not the kind of technical work they hired me for in that job. But you have to do the shit work before you can graduate to the fun stuff. Plus I still had some emotional issues to figure out which would have gotten in the way of trying for a more creative job too soon.

[Postperson]

"What type of voluntary work did you do PP?'

There was high unemployment when i left school, so that was what one did for references and experience, i knew some glib NTs who could get any job they wanted, but it was real dfferent for me. the first one was a community/university radio station, and i ended up working in the media so it was a career field i was interested in. the last few have been after i left full time work and one was a community tv station, i also 'tutored' at a montessori school cos i had to think about retraining and i had a B.A. i decided teaching wasn't for me. it's very common in arts fields to work for nothing in order to get a foot in the door or for contacts. I taught computer skills for senior cits here, as this is a retirement town so there's limited stuff around.

Did you enjoy it?

ohhh yeah, it's less stressful than paid work, generally.

[Triste]

Good question, Ashley.  And thanks for the reminder that volunteering is a great way to spend your time.  I volunteered every friday night in an ER to make sure I wanted to be a nurse - it was the highlight of my week.  I also raised money for an AIDS clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, and got to go there and give the money to the clinic in person.  That was the best week of my entire life.  People love you when you give them US dollars. 

[purposefulinsanity]

When I was doing my a-levels at school- I volunteered as a classroom assistant at a local primary school 3 half days a week.  This was when I was hoping to be a teacher so it was partly to get some experience. 

Recently, because of my agoraphobia issue, the voluntary stuff  I have been able to do is stuff that doesn't involve me leaving the house- I've made jumpers for an orphanage in China and I make premature baby stuff (and burial stuff) to send to an UK charity that distributes them to hospitals.