Volunteer!

I'm a bit late in mentioning this, but this week is Volunteer Week in New Zealand.

New Zealand is a leading nation in contribution made by volunteers. A 2008 study of the New Zealand non-profit sector estimated that volunteers make up 67% of the non-profit workforce. This is equal to 133,799 paid positions, a higher proportion than in any of the other forty world countries participating in the research project on volunteering.

Volunteer rates between different ethnic groups in the country don't differ greatly:

34.8% of Pacific people
34.5% of Pakeha
34% non NZ-born Europeans
33.4% Asians
33.2% Maori.

More women volunteer than men, but in the retirement age groups, men do more unpaid work outside the home than women.

Most volunteers are in the 30-49 age group but young people are active as volunteers. The average young person aged between 12 and 24 does over 708 hours of unpaid work outside the home a year, with young Maori giving significantly more of their time in unpaid roles than other young people.

Volunteers keep people safe by being unpaid fire fighters, St John ambulance officers, Red Cross volunteers, community patrollers, surf lifesavers, coastguards and search and rescue volunteers.

Over 820,000 people do volunteer work in sports compared to 41,000 who get paid.

These are just a few stats from Volunteering New Zealand and Office for Community and Voluntary Sector.

World of Difference

The following notice appeared in the latest Mental Health Foundation ezine:

Want something different to do in 2010? Social networking media: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, texting and blogs!

If you are not frightened by that headline, really know how to use social networks to communicate with young people, and want to make a positive difference in their lives, here's an opportunity to work on an exciting new project in 2010.

The Mental Health Foundation wants to engage with social networking sites and other innovative ways of communicating with young people, so we're shaping up a project to do just that. As with most not-for-profits, we partner with other organisations to support our work and this is why we are looking to the Vodafone World of Difference programme to help us make this project happen.

Each year the Vodafone programme pays the salaries of six gutsy people who want to make their mark on the world by working with Kiwi youth, and you (or someone you know) could be one of them!

If you're interested in taking a break from your current employment for a year and coming to work at the Foundation, check out the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation, or contact our friendly fundraising team for more information.

This seems to me to be a great opportunity for some young Presbyterian worker to get involved in....!

You can see more about the World of Difference and their projects here.

Generosity

The Office for the Community and Voluntary Centre (no, I didn't know they existed, either) in a paper entitled, How do New Zealanders Give? Ethnicity and Income Research Supplement, tells us that:

No matter their ethnicity or income level, approximately three quarters of New Zealanders support the community and voluntary sector in some way.

In 2007, three quarters (75.4%) of people 10 years and over supported the community and voluntary sector. This was by any combination of giving, volunteering or other support (such as purchasing products). When compared to this population average, the differences between ethnic groups or different personal or household incomes are relatively small.

Besides this paper, which gives some extensive information on who gives to whom, there are four reports on Generosity by the same department. These have been coming out over the last couple of years, (the latest arrived only last month) and can be found here. The papers ask:

What do we mean by generosity?
What value do we place on generosity?
What do we know about generosity?
What can we do to promote generosity in New Zealand?

None of the papers are lengthy, but they have some interesting things to say about the state of generosity in NZ (pretty good) and our attitudes towards it.

Clean-up

The Sunday after Easter, around 1500 people gathered in the Dunedin Town Hall for a Resurrection service. There were plenty of young people, but also a large number of oldies, and the enthusiasm was full on.
During that service, Bruce Elder, from Dunedin City Baptist, called for volunteers to help with a number of 'service projects' around the town. The aim was to get around 800 Christian people going out into the community to pick up on jobs that needed doing, but wouldn't get done otherwise. These varied from street cleaning, to painting playgrounds at schools to restoring the Wakari Hospital's duck ponds.
The project had been advertised at various churches around the city already, but another bunch of people signed up for it at the Resurrection service.
In the end the number who went and worked was about half the number called for, but most of the projects that had been set up got done - and the weather stayed fine for the afternoon...

International Volunteer Day

Today, the 5th of December, is International Volunteer Day (as well as National Jandal Day).

The Maxim Institute notes:
New Zealand has been described as a "nation of givers." Yearly New Zealanders give more than $270 million hours of volunteer service to non-profit institutions. At market value this equates to nearly $7 billion (the equivalent of 4.9 percent of New Zealand's GDP).
And tell this story:
Cyndy Hendry is a volunteer at the Auckland Mercy Hospice, which provides in-patient and community care for the terminally ill. Cyndy drives patients to appointments, pushes around the drinks trolley and makes cups of tea. But what is most important is the love and light with which these acts are done; Cyndy says it is about "just being friendly." Volunteering has allowed Cyndy to reach out to her wider community. Talking to her about her experience, Cyndy commented that she was recently humbled by her encounter with a Sikh family of a beautiful and terminally ill Indian woman. Encountering a culture with which she was not familiar, Cyndy described how she "learnt an enormous amount from them." Driving the couple to appointments and being a person who was there for them in a time of vulnerability saw the development of a strong relationship. Although unable to speak English, Cyndy says the dying woman "spoke love with her eyes." Cyndy has been amazed by the dignity of dying patients; she describes it as very moving: "In all honesty, I've received so much more than I've given."

Voluntary

According to Statistics New Zealand nearly a million people volunteer for a charity or worthy cause every year. Volunteering is worth $3.31 billion to New Zealand, and the combined efforts of charities and volunteers contribute 4.9% to the country’s gross domestic product. This collaboration helps New Zealand to be a healthier, safer and more successful country. Volunteers donate 270 million unpaid hours each year, and this makes it possible for over 97,000 Kiwi charities and not-for-profit projects to survive.

The recently founded 'Good' magazine has got together with Intrepid Travel to encourage volunteers within the country. There'll be awards once a year (and a prize). Their aim is to make NZ the country with the most volunteers per head of population in the world.

Mad Church Disease

I just came across the Book Blog, Mad Church Disease. It's the preliminary to a book on burnout amongst Church workers/ministers that's due to be published early next year by Zondervan. The author is Anne Jackson, and the following is a bit about her.

In 2005, a few years after she had started her tenure on a church staff, Anne, a twenty-five-year-old wound up hospitalized for gastrointestinal inflammation. She spent a week in severe pain. Every test brought one conclusion: the only thing making her ill was stress. Stress she had brought on herself.

She returned back to work informing her supervisors she wouldn't continue the crazy work schedule. However, even with working fewer hours, Anne realized she could no longer function in a healthy manner in her current environment. A friend and coworker asked her, "Does working at this church interfere with your communion with Christ?" That provocative inquiry wasn't just a question, it was also an answer.

Five months later, she resigned. After leaving, she realized the long-term impact her previous seventy hour weeks had on her marriage, her health, and her relationship with Christ.

Almost twenty years later since Anne has seen many well-known leaders fall victim to ministry burn out, including two who have been mentors in her own life. She realised she she must do whatever she could to help bring God's message of restoration, light and love to those who are pastors, or other church staff, their families, and the volunteers that give so much time on top of their busy schedules.

She began writing her book on burnout and opened up a blog for people to comment on the situation: hundreds responded, and some of their stories will become part of the book.

The book will include questions and a study guide to help the reader walk through their own personal journey of healing from (or preventing) burnout. Several leaders contributed “Second Opinions” to the book (their own thoughts on aspects of burning out and restoration) including Bill Hybels, Wayne Cordeiro, Perry Noble, Mike Foster, Gary Kinnaman, Brandi Wilson, Matt Carter, Shawn Wood, and Craig Groeschel wrote the foreword.

Nine Do's and Don'ts

Tony Morgan, on the neoleader blog, offers nine do's and don'ts for those in ministry leadership. I've just listed the nine here, but you can see his additional comments by going to the blog itself.

1. You don’t need a logo.
   
2. Your fancy flyers won’t help.
   
3. Put people first.
   
4. Lead your ministry.
   
5. Remember: print is dead.
   
6. Don’t wait on the church to establish online community.
7. You probably need to cut programs and events.
   
8. Grow through volunteers.
   
9. You are not competing against other ministries.

What he has to say beyond these nine statements is well worth considering.