This piece from Charlie deals with the difficult subject of volunteers spreading ourselves too thin. If you have experience of homelessness there are many projects in this day and age that will have a use for you, but while volunteering offers a unique opportunity for people to progress it is important that both volunteers and the organisations that utilise us are careful to make sure that we are not spread to thin. 

The volunteer, the desires and the pressures that I’ve felt from within, have also come from outside as well. People like me who have been homeless and worked their way out of homelessness, or in my case dragged out of homeless kicking and screaming and find themselves back in it, they have a desire to help others, to get them out of homelessness and out of their addictions.

In the name of mental balance, whatever it is, you have a desire within you to help others. To help the way I was helped. You try and want to help people to not go through what you’ve come through. That feeling of worthlessness, that feeling of despair.

Which all becomes part and parcel of your life when you are down in the gutter. This should never be part and parcel of your life. So you have this desire this year, this yearning, this gut wrenching feeling that you want to help other people.

So you volunteer, you put it out there, straight away. You’re offering your services for nothing, free of charge, gratis, whatever way you want to talk about it. So there are no ends of organisations that want you to come along, talk to ’em, talk to other people, put your stories out there. Try and help other people have homes, which is fantastic, which is great, but because of that desire, that passion you have within you, you willingly give that free. You willingly give that over, you give part of yourself to it.

But there are drawbacks as well that have got to be mentioned. You could end up giving yourself to lots and lots of different organisations, different companies, different agencies and you find that, you find when that happens, you find that you are doing lots of different stuff and people are saying that you are doing a shitload of stuff here, you are helping a lot of people and there’s evidence that you have helped people, there is evidence that you can go to, what organisations call the case study and you give loads of these over but as you spread yourself out thinly you become less effective.

And you find that you start giving less of yourself to all these ones, even though you are doing loads and loads all over the place. He stopped giving. Sort of less in the whole of you, but a less effective part of you. And instead of putting the workload into all of these ones, putting it all there, you find that you’re actually spending more time in your own head and giving less to all these different organisations and becoming less effective.

I think this needs to be highlighted, and people need to understand that when you have a person or people who want to give so much of themselves to help others they can spread themselves so thin they become ineffective. Because they’re fighting with their own mentality, their own mind. Yeah, I’ll do this, I got to do that. OK, I’ll do this. OK, I’ll do a case study for there. I’ve got to do a report for this, I’ve got to do a bit of research for here and a bit of research for there.

In the end you are just thinking of it, you are not actually doing it. I think the companies that bring all these volunteers on need to remember to get their volunteers to have a reset every so often too… the companies don’t put the pressure on you, the pressure is put on by yourself… okay some companies do but you often put the pressure on yourself because you’ve so got the desire to help people because your were helped.

And because of that desire to help people you end up being less effective and end up doing less of what you want to do, and I think companies need to analyse their volunteers and make sure that they’re not spreading themselves too thin and be sure that they are giving what’s required. And it’s hard to put. It’s give them a way out where you can say hold on a minute, reassess, work out what you want to do on a personal basis because you give so much to other people you forget what you actually want yourself or where you want to go yourself because you’ve spent all your time.

So I think companies, organisations, charities, agencies need to be more aware of where and what their volunteers are doing and how much stretch their volunteers can take. Because if you offer the same fruit people just keep taking, taking and taking. So my word to the organisations is for them to be aware and also for the person giving it out [the volunteer] to take a mental step back and have a look at what they’re doing and make sure they’re looking after themselves, as well as trying to help other people. Basically, what I’m saying is people have the desire to give themselves to help others.

And especially when you’ve been through homelessness, when you’ve been through mental health problems and you’ve been through addictions, you want to give your experiences, your life, to help other people to stop them going through what you’ve gone through.

And because of that, you give so much of yourself, you can forget yourself. Don’t, please don’t… the one ruling I was ever told and ignored and stay away. The one thing I was told when I first come out of it was you can’t help someone else unless you’ve helped yourself first.

You need to get yourself on to a level plane first then you can actually help others. If you are not on a level plane yourself, if you’re allowing your plane to dip then your less effective in helping others. This is gobbledegook, it’s all up and down, it’s all over the place.

But if you can pick out the different areas and put it into a correct order, implementation – I think you will understand what I am trying to say. Make sure you are on a level plane because when you are on a level plane you can do better for yourself and better for others. I do believe it. It’s not the easiest thing for someone like me to say who gives their time to so many organisations. I’ve seen it is so many other people as well, spreading themselves too thin. you have to make sure you are okay to help others. I see people knocking themselves back – please don’t forget about yourself.

It’s a realisation from myself, that volunteers need to be aware of this. I think, you know, I think the message is almost over. But. If you take the good parts and leave out the shit then you’ll have something good. But do remember that from a volunteers perspective we do it to help ourselves. We do it to ease our minds, we do it to give back.

But the organisations that take the volunteers on, just because they’re free of charge, don’t abuse them, don’t take the piss and don’t drain them dry, because there are a lot of people that fall back because they’ve been drained of their goodness. Apart from that, let me know what you think of it.

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