{"id":6439,"date":"2015-12-18T15:28:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T14:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6439"},"modified":"2015-12-18T15:47:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T14:47:45","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-volunteering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6439","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – volunteering"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_1305_opt\"<\/a>I heard a very interesting programme on volunteering<\/a> this week.\u00a0 This is something I have been mulling over for sometime and this programme covered much of what I have been mulling over.\u00a0 Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane who made the programme looked at the economics of volunteering but\u00a0 interstingly did not major on this.\u00a0 He felt it was curious though that elements of the black economy such as drug dealing and prostitution are included in UK economic figures, but not volunteering.<\/p>\n

In the UK 15 million people volunteer in a regular basis and this is worth an estimated 50-100 billion to the economy.\u00a0 The people who take part in volunteering come from every age, race and class.\u00a0 I am one of these people.\u00a0 There a number of questions that I would want to ask about volunteering.\u00a0 Does it remove economic activity from other parts of the economy? i.e. do we replace something else?\u00a0 Does it replicate state activity (i.e. replace it), so it is it a way of cutting public expenditure back?\u00a0 How do you manage volunteers?\u00a0 And what motives do we have for doing it -this is of particular interest to Christians.\u00a0 Looking at my volunteering experience I will attempt to look at these questions some of which were raised in the programme above.<\/p>\n

I have volunteered in the past for a growing project on unused land (picture above).\u00a0 Many of those involved those with this project had mental problems.\u00a0 (Much research suggests that gardening is very good for those with poor mental health.)\u00a0 I currently volunteer with our churches homelessness project.\u00a0\u00a0 On the replacement question the answer must be in some cases yes.\u00a0 But this by and large does not bother me.\u00a0 The garden project ended up running a couple of caf\u00e9s and I think a shop, so in this case people using these and purchasing food where not buying it somewhere else from a more commercial operator.\u00a0 So what- in macroeconomic terms this will make little difference.\u00a0 It might however affect the micro-economy.\u00a0 The opposite is true for our homelessness project.\u00a0 We are not replacing anything, we offer a meal on a Saturday night which almost no one else was and do so we purchase more food than would otherwise be bought.\u00a0 A few years ago the church eco group thought of setting up a project where we would insulate peoples roofs.\u00a0 In the end for various reasons it did not go ahead.\u00a0 Some of us did have a concern we were putting people of of work.\u00a0 Of course there is one other aspect of this, by volunteering we are not doing something more economically useful?\u00a0 Very difficult to quantify.<\/p>\n

The second charge of replacing cut services with volunteers is a much more serious charge.\u00a0 This was raised in the programme and the unions have obvious concerns.\u00a0 I would oppose volunteers taking over public services; partly since you are putting people out of jobs, partly since its unlikely that we can run them to the same scale as the state or as well.\u00a0 In 2010 David Cameron raised the idea of volunteering and called it the big society.\u00a0 Even his own voters treated it with extreme suspicion for the same reasons as above.\u00a0 Where I see volunteering and the state is the volunteers doing thing the state cannot.\u00a0 Such as our homeless meal.<\/p>\n

The question of how do you manage volunteers is an interesting one, but not to me in my situation.\u00a0 The beauty of my leading the cooking on the homeless meal is how fantastic my fellow volunteers are.\u00a0 They require very little in the way of management.<\/p>\n

The final question was interestingly raised in the programme.\u00a0 As a Christian I have pondered this.\u00a0 When I am in charge of the cooking at home time and later I feel a great sense of pride and satisfaction of having catered for 120 guests and 30 volunteers.\u00a0 Less so when I help and others are leaving.\u00a0 Am I wrong to feel this?\u00a0 Should I recognise this as being down to God?\u00a0 Does it affect me wanting to do the volunteering?\u00a0 These are still questions I am working through but in the meantime I see volunteering as having a role in any society.\u00a0 Its also a good reason for a citizen’s income<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One in the occasional series on alternative economics.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard a very interesting programme on volunteering this week.\u00a0 This is something I have been mulling over for sometime and this programme covered much of what I have been mulling over.\u00a0 Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,17,28,1],"tags":[168],"class_list":["post-6439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-other","category-uncategorized","tag-volunteering"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - volunteering - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6439\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6439\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6439\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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