Sometimes the difference we make is looking at things with fresh eyes. It seems to me that that is what Mark Horvath plans to do when he visits Britain to gather and share stories of homelessness here.
He’s crowdsourcing funds in the USA for a project to spend a month in the uk helping homeless people tell their stories. British Airways have donated the flights and others are helping. I’ve been watching Mark’s work and he comes withe the blessing of Beth Kanter. The video explain what a difference traveling can make for him. As he says on his blog…
The first signs of a serious homelessness crisis in England’s towns and cities are emerging, with increases in rough sleeping, street drinking, crime and antisocial behavior as a result of swingeing cuts to hostel and housing services. Charities have warned that official figures showing a 14% rise in people classed as homeless are just the “tip of the iceberg”, because they fail to capture huge numbers who have been displaced from their home and are living with friends, in hostels or on the streets. For 10 days early July Invisible People will tour the UK helping homeless people and homeless services tell their story.
A generous donor will be matching every donation up to $3,000 so your donations will be doubled. Join us, be the one helping tell how the story turns out for so many of our homeless friends in the UK.
Earlier this week Max, Nick and I went to the New Optimists Forum – Future Foods, We’re were there in a professional capacity Social Reporting from the evening to get an overview of the event online as it happened. This was Max’s first outing as a social reporter and talking to him afterwards reminded me how tiring I found it when I first started live blogging events. So I asked him afterwards what 3 tips we could have given him before we went into the session to make it easier.
These were his responses;
1. Don’t be complacent.
Max thought it was going to be easier than it actually was and didn’t expect to be quite so tired afterwards – It’s not an easy thing trying to record what is going on, keeping track of the sometimes multiple conversation and listening for a perfect sound bite to capture on camera.
2. Make sure your laptop is not too big.
Turning up with all the tools you’d need for a social reporting job as a *mobile” social reporter is easier if you have a lighter laptop. We had audio recorders, flip cameras, a stills camera and our laptops with us – spare batteries, spare chargers and a mi-fi – lugging that around can be tiring.
3. Don’t delete anything.
Max admitted afterwards that the thing he found hardest was listening and picking out the “best” bits. He said he would start writing something and then something else interested would start to be discussed so he’s scrap it and start again. He realised he could have just kept it all. He could have bullet pointed all interesting points and not worried about going into too much detail – if he’d wanted to elaborate further he could have grabbed the attendees for a video clip, getting them to reiterate the relevant points they’d made.
Social reporting is all about getting a flavour of an event, an overview of proceedings not precise minutes – it can be used at all kinds of events from large conferences to smaller neighbourhood meetings and everything in between.
It’s a skill we are employed to use often and it is also a skill we teach in our aptly named “Social Reporter Training” packages where we look at the tools to use and the “how to” of social reporting and while we already teach “Don’t delete anything” I think I’ll be adding the rest of Max’s tips into the next session we host.
Never underestimate the power of sharing knowledge, skills and experience (crucial in community development practice)
Social media surgeries are to help active citizens to join the massive conversation which is taking place on the internet
Social media surgeries are not basic IT training – we can signpost to adult learning for that
Individuals working in the public sector, voluntary sector and involved in community groups are willing to give their time
Well done and lets hope those organisations come back for more help in Bearwood. Can I make one suggestion Coral? Put some more dates in – so people who are enthused can book to come to another.
Today I didn’t write a piece for the Guardian website. I didn’t set out “5 things volunteers hate about volunteering”. That was another Nick Booth, an eloquent and civically minded Nick Booth. Not (as the site thought) this Nick Booth.
But it got me thinking about my own experience of volunteering.
One of the main ways we’ve been volunteering here at Podnosh (we are a commercial business) is through social media surgeries. It’s a curious thing, an idea that started as a one off event (based on something Pete Ashton was doing) and grew into a movement with nearly 400 surgeries so far run in 99 places. I’m also on the board of a local charity and a local arts organisation plus on advisory board of two nationalones and have been a school governor. So here are some thoughts that develop or go beyond those of the other Nick Booth – the one who did write this for the Guardian.
We don’t want to do everything for free.
Just because a volunteer will help one person or group for free, it doesn’t mean they will help anyone. We come across this frequently with the social media surgeries. Because we run the surgery in Central Birmingham on a voluntary basis it doesn’t mean that as individuals we also want to the run the surgery for Nether Wallop. I’ve had people confused and at times indignant that we won’t get on a train and run a similar thing for free in their town or city.
People often volunteer where they most feel an affinity – either with people or places. I’m certainly like that. My volunteering isn’t driven by what I want to do as much as who or where I want to help. I have a friend who spent hours volunteering in a psychiatric ward. I really couldn’t do that. She loved it.
We also run paid for surgeries elsewhere. Lots of them. That doesn’t make us bad – it just means we also have homes and families and we need to make a living.
Likewise not every volunteering organisation is funded.
At the moment the social media surgery movement isn’t – even though it manages to help more than 20oo volunteers coordinate the ways they help each other. Sometimes people treat us as if we have a duty to help them. Most quickly change once they understand it’s volunteer run, but not everyone does.
You might like bureacracy but we don’t. Honestly, we dont!
Many organisations that rely on volunteers are prone to produce a lot or paperwork around volunteers. I know they don’t set out to do that, but by happenstance they develop a bureaucratic culture. Such cultures often then expect people to give their own time and energy to feed a recording paper-mill, rather than make something better.
This is a big bugbear of mine. I dislike bureaucracy.
It’s why we asked Josh Hart (who shares my frustration) to create the website www.socialmediasurgery.com which massively simplifies how we measure outputs and outcomes from the volunteering that’s integral to social media surgeries. It doesn’t do it later or put anything onerous on the volunteers – it has it all happen as the volunteering is happening. It’s also why we’re working with the Nominet Trust to develop our Impact Assessment Tool (see thoughts on our outreach monitor here) to make it easier for organisations save time and money on measuring impact. Doing this smoothly though does something just as important: it helps you keep good relationships with your volunteers.
Don’t think it’s always about your organisation.
Dan Slee works in a local council comms department but has also volunteered as a social media surgeon and organiseing a local surgery. On his blog he wrote about winning a Big Society Award as part of the social media surgery movement. He told someone he works with about the recognition – because he was proud. They said:
“Oh, so it wasn’t actually local government that won a prize for Social Media Surgeries? That’s a shame isn’t it?”
We don’t always volunteer for the benefit of your organisation – please understand our motives, don’t assume it’s about you.
Don’t treat us as if we are less skilled than those being paid.
Good volunteering will often be filling gaps in an organisation. It’s really import to listen to, understand and value the skills of volunteers – and trust them to be good at at what they do. You have the added advantage that many are combining skills with passion – which might be a much more potent combination than skills with pay.
I don’t want to make out that I’m some super virtuous volunteer. I’m not. I do the best I can with the time and skills I have and I mostly do things that I know I will love. Likewise I don’t want to sound grim about volunteering – the stuff I get to do is always a pleasure.
But I do feel better for getting this off my chest – so thank you the other Nick Booth – who you can find here: @OhThisBloodyPC
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