Find our most recent blog post below.
INVOLVING OLDER VOLUNTEERS, NORMALISING DIFFERENCE
Three top tips to involving older volunteers.
18 July 2023
By
Ruth Leonard, Katherine Deane, Mike Locke, Jurgen Grotz
Three top tips for involving older volunteers and to start normalising difference:
• Start by understanding complex persons!
• Start by considering shifting purposes!
• Start by exploring uncertain endings!
On Thursday 06 July 2023, the Institute for Volunteering Research organised a symposium entitled ‘Co-creating solutions to barriers in volunteer involvement of and for older adult volunteers’, at the Annual Research Conference of the British Society of Gerontology at the University of East Anglia.
What we set out to do?
In this symposium we wanted to assess and discuss the physical, personal, organisational and structural barriers to volunteering for older volunteers. The format of this symposium was deliberately co-productive, involving academics, practitioners and people with lived experience, exploring knowledges and experiences from different perspectives.
Why is this important?
Many older people are involved as volunteers. However, levels of involvement are changing. As the Centre for Ageing Better put it in 2018, ‘The challenge we face is not to engage more people in later life in community contribution, but to make sure people in later life can continue to contribute’. Furthermore, the pandemic exacerbated existing social, political, cultural and economic barriers as well as creating new ones. Such barriers do not just relate to age alone but also to health, income, ethnicity and other contributory factors. Consideration of the physical, personal, organisational and structural barriers is required now, so we can create solutions to them in this ‘new normal’.
Key points of learning
Exploring barriers to volunteer involvement for older volunteers is extremely complex as physical, personal, organisational structural barriers affect individuals in many diverse ways. Yet, in our discussion, within this complexity, three themes emerged, all relating to a simple overarching learning point: solutions to barriers can only be found if those who are experiencing them are involved in finding solutions, from beginning to end.
• Inclusively involving older people in creating solutions.
Older people want to become involved, and organisations want to involve them. When developing volunteer involvement opportunities we should expect meaningful involvement of older people, co-producing solutions with them as experts by experience. This will enable us to better understand differences as old people are not all the same and do not experience the same barriers.
If volunteer involvement opportunities are developed without such involvement, they are likely to present many more barriers.
• Sharing purposes
Volunteer involvement can be good for the wellbeing of older people but only if it is a good experience. In order to ensure a good experience understanding and agreeing shared purposes is important.
If involving volunteers is done badly, for example, in an exploitative way, the reverse is likely.
• Preparing for uncertainty
Involving volunteers can include supporting people through life’s transitions. Such transitions can both act as a reason to become involved and also a trigger to withdraw. When coming to terms with change and uncertainty, volunteer involvement can be flexible and should explore opportunities.
However, especially if a task is in the forefront of preparing for volunteering, rather than the view of the volunteers, the volunteers might experience a feeling of excessive obligation. That can mean they will not even start because they are afraid that they cannot quit, and that more is being asked of them than they want to be involved with.
Summary
If we want to make sure people in later life can continue to contribute through volunteer involvement, we will need to find solutions to barriers. We will need to normalise difference by understanding complex people, exploring shared aims and acknowledging the effects of change. In practice we suggest three top tips for involving older volunteers and normalising difference:
• Start by understanding complex persons!
• Start by considering shifting purposes!
• Start by exploring uncertain endings!
And remember, volunteer involvement should be making a difference, and should also always be little bit of fun.
The Provocation and the recording of the session are available to view. We recognise that the sound quality in the recording is poor but wanted to make it available.
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk
The participation of Ruth Leonard, Mike Locke and Jurgen Grotz was funded by the Institute for Volunteering Research
The time of Katherine Deane (UEA) and Jurgen Grotz (UEA) was also supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration East of England (NIHR ARC EoE) at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. The views expressed are those of the author[s] and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.’
stories from the edge
28th March 2022
by Wendy Osborne OBE
Former Chief Executive of Volunteer Now and currently Senior Consultant to IAVE
Memory can be elusive, while it enables us to store information it can be a challenging and contrary process to retrieve it. Often it is something in the present that activates vivid retrieval of memories from the past. Two things have recently brought back to me a strong memory from 2001. The first was when IAVE (International Association for Volunteer Effort) asked me to review their Universal Declaration on Volunteering, an advocacy statement that started life some 30 years ago to recognise and support volunteering. It had a relaunch as part of the United Nations International Year of Volunteers (IYV) 2001. The second was a local investigative news programme shown on television in February of this year highlighting the still unsolved murder of the journalist Martin O’Hagan who was shot dead in September 2001. The link between Martin O’Hagan and IYV is a book celebrating volunteering in Northern Ireland. The book was written by Martin, he spent 12 months on the project and finished his final chapter on Thursday 27th September, the day before he was killed.
The strong memory for me is the journey Martin went on as he undertook the research and wrote the book, for him it was a journey of revelation about volunteering, what it is and who volunteers are. I remember planning the project and thinking that it would be great if we could find a journalist to volunteer to be involved. The search led to the National Union of Journalists and Martin humorously and honestly describes in his foreword that ‘as secretary of the local union branch, I felt someone had to come forward. The difficulty was – no one did and so I got the job by default.’ In fact, Martin could not have been more perfect for the task. He was an investigative journalist, he was cynical about those who volunteer, ‘always at the back of my mind was the acid drip notion of do-gooders.’ He was about to find out the real story about volunteering through the lives of the people he met.
Martin’s experience made him reflect on his own unconscious bias about volunteers and he declares: ‘I now think that the notion of do-gooders is a false idea born out of prejudice.’ Martin was a trade union activist, journalist and talented writer. He started off as a rather unwilling volunteer but ended up feeling empathy and admiration for each of the volunteers he met on his own personal journey of discovery. He was fascinated by Angela and Betty, Gordon and Hugh, Freda and Isabel, Ling, Martie and Michael, Austin, and Joyce, Pat and Terry, Peter, Orla and Claire, Jerome and David. A wide spectrum of age, gender, background and volunteer work. All providing Martin with a glimpse into what people do to help others, their communities and the causes they care about. One of my favourite quotes from his foreword is: ‘then there was Terry, a conservation volunteer who is the only person I have come across who seriously loves weeds.’ That humour and at times incredulity at what volunteers do and why they do it resonates through the foreword. In turn the stories of each of the volunteers are told with respect and understanding that showcases Martin’s insight and his own humanity.
My memory jog encouraged me to pull out my copy of Martin’s book and read again with delight the true stories of lives that really do make a difference. Martin titled his book ‘Stories from the Edge’ because he realised, as we all should, that there is an edginess to volunteering. Volunteers are often at the forefront, they are dealing with tough issues in tough times, they are tackling prejudice and vulnerability, they are determined and resilient, they are empathetic and caring, they are committed and highly motivated, they have a ‘can do attitude’ that makes them resourceful and innovative - they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Martin’s foreword even after 21 years still inspires me, still makes me smile. The book remains a tribute to his memory and to volunteering for the common good.
However, it is also the words of Sharon Capeling-Alakija (deceased) the then Executive Co-ordinator of United Nations Volunteers who contributed a short introductory statement to the book that bring its relevance right up to date: that ’Martin O’Hagan should tragically have forfeited his own life as yet another victim of senseless conflict serves only to remind us, whatever their achievement, how much work there remains for volunteers to do.’
Universal Declaration on Volunteering
Let us know what you think by emailing info.ivr@uea.ac.uk