Better to Give

Better To Give

On Saturday morning a bunch of children teamed up with Mrs Hooper, Mrs Birch, Mrs Sprigg and myself for “Tidy Narembeen Day”. Actually, it was only from 9 – 10:30am, but “Tidy Narembeen Hour-and-a-half” doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Even though I was a bit of a stress-case leading up to it, I’ve got to say that it was a lot of fun teaming up with the kids to tidy up the main street area as well as fundraise for our tree-planting project next term. I loved the enthusiasm of the young people as they launched themselves into their various tasks, and the support from people down the street – even on a fairly quiet morning – was fantastic. We were able to raise roughly $140 from sales of drinks & snacks.

The primary purpose was to provide an opportunity for the children to do something good for their world in a local sense – we are going to move to a global project later in the year. There are many ways that people can get involved in doing good things for their community through service clubs and local projects, and groups like these are always in need of more volunteers.

According to a news.com.au report on June 27 (based on figures from the 2006 census), about one in five Australians over 18 years of age do volunteer work. W.A. was the worst performing state, with only 16.8 percent of people volunteering (in defence of the bush, this was mostly due to Perth’s low return of 15.1%)!

In my experience, doing voluntary work has been very enriching personally – it provides a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to have made a contribution to your community or to people further away, and it is a great experience to work alongside people for a good cause. The hardest time to be a volunteer is when it feels like you are going it alone.

In our marketing-driven society it seems that people are being trained to expect more and give less. Jesus goes against the grain and says “It’s better to give than receive”. That sounds like a load of rubbish, but when I think of some of the happiest times of my life, they are often times when I was working together with others for something worthwhile.

The main exception is when people do something because someone needs to do it, but no-one else will. We certainly need people to step up in these situations, but it doesn’t feel so good to be a volunteer when it feels like the effort is being dragged out of you. The best way we can help these people rediscover the joy of giving their time and energy is to get in there alongside them and give them a hand!

What are you passionate about? What are you good at? What times are you most available? What new skills would you like to develop? What are some areas of need in our community? Who would you like to get to know better? These are all things to think about when choosing how to be involved as a volunteer.

Mike Birch