[sl/intern/teen] Volunteerism and You!
Hey everyone! My name is Vicky and I was a Global Kids Intern this year. Some fun things about me include, my pink highlights, the fact that I am a twin, and that I enjoy ranting about just about anything.
Awareness of Global issues, both small and large is something very close to my heart. Often what I saw with the teens on the island is the fact global issues are something they (fellow gk loving teens) care about as well, but they were unsure what to do to begin “fixing” the problem.
So on April 20, 2008 I ran the event “Volunteerism and You!” with the direct intention of not only discussing why volunteering is so important but also to give the teens the resources they need to begin volunteering themselves.
To understand what the teens felt on volunteering in the first place I decided to use the ever-popular “Human Barometer” platform. My three statements were:
o Teenagers should volunteer the time they have now because they might not have it later.
o Volunteer work is important for social progress to be made.
o Volunteering is successful even if no one notices or only one life is changed.
Views went all over the board, some agreed whole-heartedly, some were confused, and others just simply disagreed. While I would love to say I remember more than confusion and affirming people I do not because at that moment I was busy dealing with something I had never seen on GK Island. Griefing. It was difficult to deal with all the commotion!
Eventually we got through the barometer and moved on to the discussion portion of the event. For me this was the best part of the event. By this point the griefing no longer took place and we were ready to discuss everything, from where I have volunteered to how to start volunteering. I even think I helped a few people to start thinking about how they want to help!
So what did I learn from this experience?
1. When facilitating be sure to be heard, even if it means repeating yourself a hundred times or breaking you sentences into hundreds of tiny bits.
2. Be sure to get directions across and stress the importance of pre-typing!
3. Griefing is hard to end in local chat so next time attempt to reach them via IM.
4. The longer you wait to do your blog post the harder it is.
5. Lucky Figtree was right when she said “You’ll be laughing at yourself for being scared of this when it’s all over.”
Over all it was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to run my next event!
Oh! By the way, sorry for the lack of pictures! I was so nervous I forgot about them!
