Wednesday World Changers: Australian Volunteers International

Happy 60th birthday Australian Volunteers International (AVI) - a great presentation from Dimity Fifer #VolAus11 http://t.co/92TiCby0

Monday Motivation: International Volunteers Day

Unselfish and noble actions are the most radiant pages in the biography of souls.  ~David Thomas

Power to Change?

Thank you to Rob Jackson from the United Kingdom for contributing today's blog post for International Volunteers Day.

Each year, the 5^th December is the United Nations International Volunteers Day. Actually, to give it it’s full title it is UN International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development.

Some, like my friend and colleague Jayne Cravens, find this distinction from other forms of volunteering important whilst others use the day as an opportunity to celebrate all volunteering. As Jayne’s blog suggests (follow the link above to read it) it all depends on how you interpret the name of ‘the day’.

This year ‘the day’ falls at the end of the UN’s celebration of ten years since the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10) and at the end of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 (EYV11). Both of these international years have been opportunities to celebrate the work of volunteers, to understand volunteering a little bit more and to promote its importance to society, whether nationally or internationally.

Back in 2005 the UK also had its own Year of the Volunteer. The announcement in 2004’s budget speech by then Chancellor (and later Prime Minister) Gordon Brown MP came as a total surprise to his officials and fellow MPs and Ministers but it gave yet another chance to showcase volunteering. Perhaps that’s why the year had little impact on volunteering.

In the UK levels of formal volunteering (that is volunteering done with/through an organisation) have, according to government figures, remained pretty constant for the last decade. We entered 2011 with about the same number of people doing formal volunteering as ten years ago, despite millions of pounds of investment by government.

More recently interest in volunteering shot up, mostly as a result of the financial crisis, but the numbers of people actually doing formal volunteering haven’t changed. That suggests to me that there is a mismatch between what people want from volunteering and what many organisations offer volunteers.

In the same ten year period, recent data from NCVO and Skills Third Sector shows that the number of paid staff in the voluntary and community sector in England rose by 40%. That’s a staggering amount of growth, not only in numbers of staff but cost to the donor. Personally I think it implies a worrying disregard by many organisations for volunteering as a way to effect social and economic change.

So if recent data implies that all these international days and years aren’t effecting much significant change, where can we look for the power of volunteering?

As well as IYV+10 and EYV11, this year’s UN volunteer day falls at the end of a year in which I think we’ve seen more change globally than in any year since the Berlin Wall came down. We’ve had the Arab spring and Occupy Wall St (and other places) protests, to mention just two high profile examples. Both of these, and many others too, have been powered by volunteers, people “doing more than they have to - because they want to - in a cause they consider good” (to quote the late great Ivan Scheier).

Such revolutionary endeavour to effect change invariably starts with volunteers. It starts with people who are passionate about a cause and have a strong desire to see things change. It doesn’t start with paid staff, with a requirement for funding before we take action or as a result of government support.

So on this year’s UN International Volunteer Day, whether you want to focus on volunteering for economic and social development or on some other form of volunteering, the important thing is that we celebrate and promote volunteering. Volunteering that has the power to change the world.

God knows we need some change for the better.

Wednesday World Changers: International Children's Peace Prize

Five children out of 98 children from 42 countries were nominated for the  International Children's Peace Prize 2011.

The winner was  Michaela Mycroft (17) from South Africa. Michaela was born with Cerebral Palsy, which limits her leg and arm functions.

Eight years ago, with the help of her sister and three friends, Mycroft decided to sell cards and flower pots to raise money for a motorised wheelchair. They raised ZAR20 000 in seven weeks.

Because of the success of this project, “Chaeli” as she is known, felt the need to help other children.

Her organisation ‘Chaeli Campaign’ now employs 20 people and assists more than 3 000 disabled South African children every year by providing special equipment.

The other 2011 nominees were:

Liza (17) from Palestine who uses sport to build peace between Israeli and Palestinian youth with a Peace Sport Schools program. In addition, she started a girls football team, introducing women’s football to the Palestinian society.

Malala (13) from Pakistan who dared to stand up for herself and other girls using international media to let the world know girls should also have the right to go to school when it was banned by the Taliban.  "To me education is the only tool that makes a man civilized, a good citizen and help develop the Pakhtun society," she said






Nikolay (17) from Armenia who blogs about human rights and democracy via a website and blog. He aims to inspire other children to spread support for human rights and democracy in Armenia.









Winfred (14) from Uganda monitors the inciences of child abuse and neglect and documents cases of violence against children. Sge established  Kamuli Children’s Counselling Club, where children receive counselling on various challenges they are facing. Winfred also set up a Tree Planting Club to plant more trees and create a green environment for the school. She also set up a Children’s Court which settles disputes amongst children without interference of adults.


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Volunteer Australia Conference Reportback

400 people attended the Volunteering Australia conference on the Gold Coast. The number was down from their original 600 target. Whether the numbers were down because of the high cost, change of date and venue, the recession or the program we will never know.

We do know that about 1000 people read my blog post on the high cost of the Conference and not one person disagreed with my comments. Volunteering Australia sadly ignored the blog post which is I would suggest a poor response to such a large group of their constituents and poor social media strategy.

We do know that Conference keynote speaker Michael Kirby was his usual brilliant self and that The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP launched  the long awaited national volunteer strategy for Australia. I will comment on the strategy next week.

 We also know that the hashtag #VolAus11 has over 800 twitter comments from over 130 participants. They included:

RT @neridagill: RT @creativewire: Recruiting volunteers is not about 'asking for a favour', it's about giving yr volunteers something meaningful #volaus11


Congrats to Cary and the team at Volunteering Australia on a very successful and beneficial conference. You should be very proud! #volaus11


RT @CreativeWire: The not-for-profit market is 7 times larger than the mining sector in Australia #volaus11


Awesome->RT @ProBonoNews: 'Many of the leaders in volunteering are corporate groups' says Vol Aust of their research #volaus11


Conference attendees,  my readers and I would love your feedback. Please leave some comments. You can be anonymous or open.

Tuesday Tech: Qantas Social Media #fail

This week's Tuesday Tech was going to be on the changes to Google+ which will be of interest to Not for Profits. After the extraordinary gaffe that Qantas the Australian airline committed on Twitter,  that is now next week's blog. There is so much to learn from Qantas fatal actions so I am republishing (and adapting_ this post from my travel blog: Wild about Travel. 


It all started innocently. Last week Qantas began a new social media campaign called “Qantas Luxury”. From my view it seems to be an attempt to to win back the hearts and minds of Australians concerned about Qantas. The airline has been battered by four issues in the last year particularly:

1. a series of  incidents which have suggested to some that the airline appears to be less safe than it once was
2. a decision to shift more of the airline’s resources offshore
3. some of the most acrimonious relations between the company and the unions ever which has led to months of ongoing industrial conflict
4. the recent grounding of the airline by the CEO Alan Joyce which stranded 10s of thousands of people around the world

On Tuesday at 9am Australia Eastern Summer Time, the Qantas PR department sent these Tweets:

The first Twitter response said : ‘Planes that arrive intact and on time because they’re staffed and maintained by properly-paid, Australia-based personnel.


Then the Tweets poured in. Within two hours, #qantasluxury was sitting on 13 tweets a minute. By the end of the day, some commentators are claimed they had reached 51 tweets a minute. Within 24 hours, the hashtag #qantasluxury had 1.5 million impressions. Most of the Tweets were negative toward Qantas.


The chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce on October 31 after the grounding said “I think the Qantas brand is an amazingly resilient brand, and predicted it would bounce back. These tweets suggest the bounce back may take a long time…


PuppyOnTheRadio: BREAKING NEWS: Qantas introduce #QantasLuxury class. Same as standard class, but the plane leaves the ground.


corinne_grant: it’s a few weeks ago, but I wrote this break-up letter to Qantas. Seems pertinent again today. thehoopla.com.au/dear-qantas-me/ #qantasluxury #myarse


GrogsGamut:  #QantasLuxury is that safe feeling that comes from knowing your pilots are wearing the correct coloured ties [a reference to the suspension of pilots for wearing a red tie protesting Qantas management decisions]


jeremysear : Quick note to corporate Australia: when you’re in the middle of crushing your workforce, don’t start a twitter promotion. #QantasLuxury


rgcooke: Can’t wait to see the Air Crash Investigations episode on the #qantasluxury hashtag disaster.


RustyAway: #qantasluxury Alan Joyce giving his ill-gotten pay rise to charity and then resigning.


SoBohring: Not having to worry about the safety demonstration, because you can’t crash if your flight never leaves


Qantas soon had a Social Media #epicfail on their hands!


I think, at this point, they needed to acknowledge the seriousness of the complaints and make an apology to the public. Qantas needed to tell the public that they understand that the grounding of an airline was not going to be compensated for by a few pairs of pyjamas. Instead Qantas tweeted:


@QantasAirways At this rate our #QantasLuxury competition is going to take years to judge.


Ah, yes it will. The sensible thing next would be for the CEO to respond publicly promising that the issues in the tweets will be read and addressed. Then following that up with doing just that. There is enough unambiguous material in the Tweets to help the airline understand how the public feels. Instead Mr Joyce has “gone to ground”, vanishing from public view. He has done this amidst allegations that the action to ground the planes was preplanned. In addition, there is legal action by the pilots’ union alleging their lockout was an over reaction to wearing the wrong colour ties (no planes were cancelled by the pilots’ actions).


Joyce has now declined an invitation to appear before an Australian  senate inquiry into the Qantas Sale Act citing unavailability. This is despite his earlier assurances under oath that he was ”happy to defend [the decision to ground the airline] and talk about it in any forum, anywhere, because it was the right call”.


If the first sensible thing is not followed, then the next sensible action would be to sack Mr Joyce. Despite Amanda Vanstone suggesting he is a nominee for Australian of the year, Mr Joyce has lost the confidence of his flight crews, pilots, frequent flyers and the general public. To restore that confidence, he needs to be the Board’s Sacrificial lamb.


The twitter feed for  #qantasluxury is here: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23QantasLuxury


You can also find tweets with a mis spelled version of Qantas (the airline does not have a U in its name). https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23QuantasLuxury


In the meantime, one of my favourites:


RT @kiwi_kali: #qantasluxury Somewhere in Qantas HQ a middle aged manager is yelling at a Gen Y social media “expert” to make it stop. / LOL

Monday Motivation: Giving

      

“If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart”

 Arab Proverb quotes

What are we rewarding?

Attendees at my training know I make fun of some of the stereotypes that the sectors use ti celebrating their volunteers. I read one this week ....and please, please do not hear me belittling the amazing volunteers in the community.


One of the awards went to a woman who contributes many hours to volunteering: organising events, supervising and providing opportunities to disadvantaged, worked on challenges, broke a Guinness Book of Records record, supporting the community parade, does street fundraising, sells cookies/biscuits, organises and enables people to go on camps. 


Daunting isnt it? Who else can aspire to this?

Another  works ‘behind the scenes’ without supervision. Thats an interesting message. 

When we are rewarding volunteers for their efforts, the number one thing we want as volunteers is to be personally thanked. How are you doing that? How can we celebrate volunteering without sounding daunting?

Wednesday World Changers: Emmanuel from Iraq

I posted this amazing video on my Facebook. There are some inspiring people in this world. Emmanuel, a victim of chemical warfare in Iraq, sings his heart out on Australian TV.

A picture tells a 1000 words

There are a myriad of opinions regarding the various Occupy movements around the globe: "idealist" "crackpots", "disillusioned", "people who need to get a job", "hypocritical."All of these comments have been levelled at the people who have pitched tents in squares, parks and universities across the world.
I have seen the tents in Pittsburgh, Melbourne, Portland and Edinburgh this month. Accompanying these movements has been the full power of Social Media. Mobile phones and cameras are madly uploading content to blogs, Facebook and Twitter across the globe.

For most of us what has been happening in the tent cities and the actions against them including removal has been occurring on the sidelines. I was shocked a little out of complacency by the actions shown in this film where armed police at University of California, Davis are filmed pouring pepper spray at seated peaceful protestors. The  old adage a picture tells a 1000 words has come true with this video.

The impact of the videoing of this event?:

• the video has gone viral- no one knows how many times the millions of videos circulating the net have been viewed
• Two of the officers have been suspended
• The Davis Faculty Assn. issued a letter  demanding that Chancellor Katehi step down. "The Chancellor's role is to enable open and free inquiry, not to suppress it," the association wrote, calling Katehi's approval of police force to remove the Occupy Davis tents a "gross failure of leadership."
• The board of the statewide Council of UC Faculty Associations agreed
• The Chancellor distanced herself from the Police action and formed a taskforce to investigate the incident saying "It left me with a very bad feeling of what went on"
• two of the police officers have been suspended

All because someone had a video camera and that someone was joined by many other someones with phones and cameras and ipads. Those someones, all had the internet to access and the ability to upload this footage. This is Social Media.

More video footage of this incident here: http://z6mag.com/featured/pepper-spray-video-at-uc-davis-unedited-during-occupy-protest-163175.html