Tim Josss Inspiration series draws in lessons from beyond the arts. Here he looks at the changing fortunes of volunteering and the story of a former Charity of the Year, the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group.
Within sight of the planes at Gatwick Airport, you can find a modern building surrounded by high security fences. It is Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centre. It holds 135 asylum seekers and immigration detainees.
For a detainee, detention can be sudden and traumatic. The duration and outcome is uncertain. It is a life of isolation, language challenges, ignorance of legal process and a lack of particular basics such as clothing and international phonecards. The Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group was created 12 years ago to offer support.
The Group is led and run by volunteers. Seventy volunteers, speaking 24 languages, regularly visit and befriend detainees, listening and caring about what happens to them, acting as a contact with the outside world and noticing when anxiety and depression, or other medical problems, are becoming serious. Each volunteer visitor receives training in listening skills, cultural awareness, and the psychological and legal aspects of detention. The Group is governed by a volunteer board and volunteer area co-ordinators manage the visitors. It is backed up by three paid staff whose job is to administer the charity, support visitors and lobby. The Group is so well regarded that it is consulted by Chief Inspector of Prisons when making a Tinsley House inspection. As well as supporting individual detainees, it achieves changes to the system. It heard about violence in vans transporting detainees and so CCTV was introduced.
The Government and volunteering
The Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group exemplifies how successfully volunteers can contribute to overcoming contemporary problems. Not surprisingly, Government interest in volunteering is now high. New ideas and initiatives abound and support, including funding, is there to be used. In the last few years, there have been five important developments:
- The Office of the Third Sector was created in 2006. Based in the Cabinet Office, its minister is Ed Miliband. Volunteering is a high priority. There are concerns about low level engagement with the democratic process, declining participation in community life, the lack of glue to hold a fractured society together, and an individualistic population which does not think or involve itself enough as active citizens. Volunteering is seen as part of the solution, which is fulfilling both for society and the individual volunteer.
- This view is reflected in the stated vision of the Commission on the Future of Volunteering (http://www.volcomm.org.uk) which will report in October: We enrich our own lives by enriching the lives of others through the giving of time. The Commission is still welcoming contributions. The report will recommend initiatives and funding programmes, spanning youth participation, employers roles, opportunities for those not in work, volunteer awards and other recognition, and training and development.
- Launched in 2004, Volunteering England (http://www.volunteering.org.uk) is the national volunteer development agency and it is the secretariat to the Commission. It was formed through the merger of three national volunteer bodies and provides practical tools and resources, funding, facts and figures about volunteering, news and information, a route to the England-wide network of Volunteer Development Agencies, and research and publications.
- The Russell Commission looked at how to engage more young people in volunteering and community action. It reported in 2005. Government accepted the reports recommendations and £100m of public funding has been allocated over three years to support their implementation. Key to this is a new organisation, named v (http://www.wearev.com), which was launched in 2006.
- Volunteering for All (http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ third_sector) is a two-year cross-government programme worth £3m. The aim is to encourage volunteering by people with disabilities, limiting long-term illness or no formal qualifications, and from black and minority ethnic communities. Volunteering for All is said to fund excellent examples of volunteering and awareness-raising programmes.
Questions for the arts world
Do you enrich volunteers lives? Are you making best use of volunteers? For example, your volunteers are both part of the arts workforce and arts consumers. Volunteers can therefore make a crucial contribution to marketing and campaigning. Are you equipped to use volunteers in this way? Do you induct, train and develop your volunteers to give them new skills and experience, and get the best out of them? The very act of volunteering can be an excellent way of bringing people together, whatever their background or culture. Do you make the most of this? How do you recognise and celebrate the contribution of volunteers?
Have you something to contribute to this wider debate about the future of volunteering? In the case of public funders of the arts, the question could be put this way: we all want the arts to be closer to the heart of life part of the core script of the country and the Government. As this article reveals, volunteers are already part of that core script, but are funders as engaged with volunteering as fully as they should be?
Tim Joss is Director of the Rayne Foundation. Previously he was Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Bath Festivals, Bournemouth Orchestras' Senior Manager, and an Arts Council Music & Dance Officer.
More information can be found on the Volunteers Week website at http://www.volunteersweek.org.uk.
Volunteers Week is organised by Volunteering England and takes place from 1 to 7 June 2007.
e: tjoss@raynefoundation.org.uk