Volunteering is about freely giving your own time to help someone else. But it’s also enormously rewarding for the individuals themselves. Sarsh Butler nvestigates.

I’m sitting in the tiny back office behind Sense’s shop in Tonbridge, Kent. There’s barely room in here for the desk, two chairs and the shelf of files: the real business goes on in the stock room and in the shop itself. This space is functional, no bigger than it needs to be. But on the wall, amongst the notices and calendars, is a yellow smiley face saying ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. That’s what volunteering with Sense is all about.

I’m waiting to meet Peter, a volunteer in the shop. When he arrives he seems tense and walks with a stick. He sits in the manager’s chair and tells me how he came to be volunteering for Sense. Until a year ago, Peter was a machine operator in a factory, but then everything went wrong.

‘I started having mini strokes, so after twenty-something years they got rid of me. I don’t miss my old job; in a nutshell it was the way they laid me off. The production manager took my stick and threw it across the floor. If I wanted my job I had to go and get it.’

Peter couldn’t find a new job, but one week down at the Job Centre he was approached by the British Legion team based there, who asked if he’d be interested in volunteering. He said yes, and by the time he got home, they were on the phone to tell him there was a vacancy at Sense. He hasn’t looked back since the day he started, and he’d recommend it to anybody: ‘Give it a go. To be quite honest with you I didn’t ever think I’d be a volunteer. But I’ve got used to it now. It’s one big happy family.’

Peter’s not a typical volunteer for Sense. There’s no such person. They come from all backgrounds, can be twenty or eighty, and volunteer in all sorts of different ways. The one thing that does unite them is the pleasure they get from their volunteering.

Sense is founded on volunteering. This time last year, Talking Sense talked to members of its self-help groups, all run by volunteers. But there are many more volunteers in Sense, working in shops, raising funds, helping on Sense holidays, and in the office.

What inspires all these people to give their time to Sense? There are as many reasons as there are volunteers, it seems. Take Ruth Phillips. She’s bright and chatty and enormously positive about her volunteering: last year she helped at a Sense summer holiday for the first time, and followed it up with a holiday weekend in September, she enjoyed it so much.

Ruth is 33, and works in logistics. She had no connection with Sense before the holiday, though over ten years ago she applied to volunteer on a holiday and was turned down because her application came in too late. Sense had been inundated with applications from people who had also seen Sense holiday volunteering featured on television. The moment passed, Ruth went to university, started work, married, and didn’t have time to volunteer.

But after two years of personal upheaval, in 2005 Ruth was ready to do new things: ‘I decided that life was too short and it was time to do the things I wanted to.’ So she emailed Sense, offering to do any kind of volunteering, and they responded suggesting that she apply for a holiday.

Ruth is disarmingly honest about her motive for volunteering: ‘I’m totally selfish about it, you get a lot more out than you put in.’ She’s not alone in this, in fact almost every volunteer I spoke to said the same. They’re really glad to be helping Sense, but the reason they volunteer is because they love it so much.

What do people get out of volunteering? Of course it depends on who they are and what they are doing. But most volunteers find what they do challenging and rewarding. If they have a paid job, it may give them the chance to do something quite different for a while. If they are retired, or unable to work in a formal job, it may give them the chance to be part of a working community again, to participate in society.

This aspect of volunteering, the way it opens up new avenues in people’s lives, isn’t often talked about. But it’s at the root of why many people volunteer for Sense. Volunteering means that they are doing something really useful, whether it’s pricing goods in a shop, planning a balloon race to raise funds, or taking a deafblind child swimming.

Some shop volunteers, and others, may feel marginalised from society, by illness, disability or age, even though they want to participate. Tracey, the assistant manager of the Sense shop in Tonbridge, works with a close-knit group of volunteers. She’s recruited many of them personally by talking to her customers and people she meets as she goes around town. She believes strongly that volunteering is good for people, and that everyone has something to offer: ‘The only qualification a shop volunteer needs is a willingness to work.’

Tracey and her team run a successful shop, raising good money for Sense. They couldn’t do that without volunteers: they are essential. In return, those volunteers are, perhaps for the first time in many years, part of a community, working together and supporting each other, and all focused on the needs of the shop.

‘Volunteering gives people confidence. They’ll start in the stock room usually, then we get them out on the shop floor. Lots have lost jobs through illness, one lady lost her husband four years ago and needs something to concentrate on. It took Tracey a year to persuade one of her volunteers to come to the shop, he’s a manic depressive, and working in the shop brings him out of himself: ‘he’s found his personality and his sense of humour.’

Plenty of volunteers aren’t marginalised, of course, but are looking for something extra in their lives. Even if they love their work, they may feel they could do more and really get involved in making a difference to people’s lives. Whatever’s missing, there’s bound to be a volunteering opportunity somewhere to fill that gap.

Pukul Rana took that opportunity three years ago, when a friend emailed him to see if he fancied volunteering on a Sense holiday. He works in communications at the British Council, so the holiday was something completely different:

‘As it turned out, it was brilliant, just what I needed at the time. We all go through phases when we just need something extra to stimulate us, really show what we are capable of achieving, and then you find something that opens up a whole new world.

‘The results of what you do are very instant, unlike working. It’s a real challenge. That instant response can be positive or negative. It can work, and it can’t work, and when it doesn’t work it can be quite a daunting experience, but there’s always someone on hand to support you and help you out.’ Pukul enjoyed his holiday so much, he’s been helping ever since.

What does Sense do that makes people keep coming back? Its volunteers are a loyal band; turning up to the shop week in week out, organising fundraising events year after year … It seems that the key is in the people at Sense, both volunteers and staff. Everyone talks about the importance of team work and comradeship. And volunteers trust the staff to give them good leadership and support.

In fact Sense’s staff’s commitment may be the key to its volunteering success. Pam Richardson has been a holiday volunteer since 2000, and has also volunteered with another organisation, but she comes back to Sense because of its staff: ‘Even if I don’t always agree with what they’re doing, they’re always very committed.’

Many volunteers I spoke to talked about the inspiration they derived from the staff, from their passion and excitement, and from the care they give when volunteers need support.

Volunteering is for people who aren’t happy just to sit around. Whether you’re working in a shop, running an event or helping on a holiday, it’s going to be hard work. But the rewards are immense.

Here’s what Andy Ratcliffe has to say about the rewards of volunteering. He’s new to volunteering with Sense, but he’s more than made up for lost time, and last year he went on three holidays and several weekends.

His first holiday was one of the most challenging: ‘After the first day I’d had no sleep as I’d been up since three am. I sat outside with my head in my hands thinking “Why am I here?”.’ So why did he carry on? ‘I’m a stubborn bugger. If I say I’m going to do something I’ll do it. And I didn’t want to let the others down. Benedict, the leader, instantly clocked that I was struggling, and he was a great help.’

In contrast to that holiday, in April Andy helped on a holiday for people with acquired deafblindness, the youngest of whom was 64 and the oldest was 87. Activities were never more demanding than serving cups of tea and walking around gardens. As Andy says, it was ‘a very relaxed pace, compared to usual’.

‘The last one I did was with a lad with cerebral palsy. Everything was with hoists. That was a really challenging holiday it was pretty intense… That’s one of the key things about Sense’s work, with people who’ve never met before we worked as a team. In a very stressful environment we gelled and came together. Sense is a choice you make.’

It was obviously incredibly demanding, and perhaps holiday volunteering is not for everyone. As Andy says, ‘Personal care’s not an attractive prospect to some people. Most people are pushing their personal boundaries. And it is 24/7. You don’t get an awful lot of time off. But in response you get possibly the most rewarding experience you can find.’

‘The holiday went above and beyond my expectations. It’s been really good. I’ve had to do things I’ve found really hard work, I’ve had to do things I thought I’d only have to do for myself and my children. I’m a much more accepting person now. There’s nothing that fazes me any more. It’s a life-changer.’

And you can’t ask for much more than that.

Story 1

Sarah Potter

Sarah mother runs the Woodside Centre in Bristol, so Sarah knew all about what Sense does before she volunteered: Sense’s work clearly inspires her.

After a year’s travelling, Sarah spent a week in Sense’s Finsbury Park offices helping the fundraising team. ‘It was a good experience; I was quite surprised as I had a bit of a rose-tinted view of fundraising. I spent a few days with the events team, a few days with the corporate team, and some time with John who does the mail-outs. It was so professional, so business-like.’

Even though she now has a full-time job, Sarah has more fundraising up her sleeve: she’s about to go shark diving to raise funds for Sense. She’s not satisfied with that though, ‘You always wish you could do more, and there aren’t enough hours in the day.’

Story 2

Pam Richardson

Pam started volunteering on Sense holidays in 2000, straight after she retired. She’s only missed one year since then.

Holiday volunteering is perfect for Pam: ‘I like to volunteer, but if I do meals on wheels, etc. it’s a weekly commitment, and if I want a week off I have to find someone to take my place. But with Sense, it’s a week out and that’s all. It gives me the feeling that I’m giving assistance to someone, but I’ve got time to myself. That sounds selfish, doesn’t it?’

Her friends can’t see why she does it; they think she’s already done enough. But Pam says ‘They don’t realise how much you get out of it.’

Story 3

John Crabtree

John’s been fundraising for Sense for 13 years, and for the last four or five he’s also been a trustee. He’s a busy lawyer and hard to reach, it seems a miracle that he finds time to volunteer, but he says ‘I do it at funny times around the edges, ten minutes here, and ten minutes there.’

John sets his own fundraising agenda, and clearly enjoys all the events he organises, from black tie dinners to treks in the Himalayas. ‘The best thing was when I chartered Concord from BA. We took a hundred people on a three hour flight down to the Bay of Biscay and broke the sound barrier.’

Luck brought John to Sense: ‘I got asked to find someone for a new fundraising committee in Birmingham, and I couldn’t find anyone to do it so I went along to the first meeting myself. It’s become a habit!’

Story 4

Ian Chapman

Ian works in the Sense shop in Cottingham in Yorkshire. Like most other volunteers, he knew nothing about Sense’s work before joining the shop. Sense came along at a time of radical change in his life:

‘Six years ago down in Eastbourne a driver crossed the carriageway and we had a head-on collision.’ Ian’s life changed in seconds: as a result of the injuries from the accident Ian had to have major surgery, the most serious of which was on his brain: ‘I can’t drive any more. I can’t work any more.’

Ian had to retire from his job as a headmaster, and now he works for Sense. ‘I don’t do it for Sense, I do it for myself. I get confused and I have a mechanism in my brain to help with my short-term memory. So I work in the back room. I just love it, we have such a laugh.’

Story 5

Audrey Merrells

Audrey’s an unusual volunteer, because until she retired she was the manager of the Sense shop in Dover where she now volunteers. Her daughter is now the shop’s manager.

Many volunteers help out family or friends at busy times or with big projects, a lot of them probably don’t even see themselves as volunteers. When Audrey was manager her husband would come in and help out too.

‘You know volunteers’ families, you watch them grow up. If someone dies you go to their funeral. You celebrate birthdays. It’s like one big family.’