This is a subscriber-only article
No matter where you live in Ireland, I’m pretty sure that — given the right opportunity for an ambush — there’s a voluntary committee ready to pounce and sign you up as a new member. Recruitment to the parish Tidy Towns committee or the local residents’ association normally comes down to finding yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I speak from experience.
Usually, it’s somebody you actually thought was one of your friends who is implicitly involved in the snare. There you were thinking that it was such a welcoming thing for them to do when they invited you out for a coffee – and even said they would pick you up on the way. You should have known the plot could only thicken after that.
Any new volunteer thrust into such a situation might feel just a wee bit vulnerable but, in reality, they should certainly not feel lonely. In 2015, more than 62 million people around the world provided their time free of charge to community and not-for-profit groups in the form of volunteerism. Added together, these people provided just short of eight billion hours of service to contribute to the greater good.
Here in Ireland we have more than 22,500 not-for-profit organisations, ranging from school boards to sports clubs, charities and much more and at the last count, about a million Irish people were volunteering a staggering 233 million hours of service each year.
During COVID-19, we volunteers came into our own. In the finest tradition of the ancient, ‘meitheal’ (when every person helped their neighbour out of a spot of bother in bringing home the turf or saving the hay), we showed we really cared.
An Ipsos MRBI survey commissioned by Volunteer Ireland discovered that three-quarters of the population here volunteered their time throughout the pandemic, the most popular activities being helping with grocery shopping (40%), befriending someone who was lonely (31%) and collecting prescriptions (29%).
These were historic times in our country when ordinary people did extraordinary things and we should rightly celebrate it, but there’s a lighter side to this volunteerism malarkey too. After 40 years of attending meetings, I can enlighten readers on some of the great characters that you will meet when you find yourself roped into a voluntary committee for the first time.
I’ve met them all so many times now that I’m convinced these characteristics exist on every ‘comm-i-tee’ in Ireland, and you might even find two of them on some, as I discovered at a meeting in Co Mayo recently.
These were historic times in our country when ordinary people did extraordinary things and we should rightly celebrate it, but there’s a lighter side to this volunteerism malarkey too. After 40 years of attending meetings, I can enlighten readers on some of the great characters that you will meet when you find yourself roped into a voluntary committee for the first time
Biscuit Cruncher
First there’s ‘The Chairman’ with the ‘Three Ds policy’. We all know them. Full of sweetness and light, they couldn’t wait to get the chair but we soon learned about their work rate after they dictated, delegated and then disappeared when the hard work started!
You know, of course, that every committee has a ‘Biscuit Cruncher’ on board. You get to know them well after a while because they rarely open their mouth at all during a meeting, yet never fail to leave without flooring every last Kimberly or Mikado from the plate.
The ‘Ticket Seller’ is a danger to run into at your first committee meeting. Fall for their wiles and you’re sure to be caught for the GAA lotto, the club draw or even the Oscar night sponsorship. They’ve been at it for over 20 years now. Little wonder that their own families are avoiding them at home or in church on Sundays.
The ‘Latecomer’ is, without exception, an honorary member of every voluntary committee in Ireland. The meeting has been on for at least 20 minutes before they appear and after the customary, “Eh… chairperson... apologies” nod of the head, they will want to go back and talk about something that was done and dusted 10 minutes earlier and normally will be right too.
The ‘Fly-In-The-Ointment’ is the last, but possibly my favourite. This is usually the most litigious committee member who thrives on stories of civil claims after accidents in playgrounds, runaway lawnmowers etc.
They will wait until the very end of a 30-minute discussion on the summer festival before pointing out ten good reasons why it can’t go ahead anyway, from the lack of public liability cover for the bouncing castle to the threat of a hurricane.
I do hope, of course, that none of the above puts you off the joys of becoming a volunteer. I have been doing it for 40 years — and surely have the bug. A sizeable pension definitely awaits.
I had a huge reaction to last week’s piece on the Ukrainian refugees arriving here - and a few callers who were keen to make a point about employment that I failed to mention. A Co Meath food producer tells me that, were it not for their presence and availability to work, he wouldn’t have been able to trade over the last 12 months – such is the scarcity of labour in that sector. “90,000 isn’t half enough “ he says, “we need the labour.”
Follower Ciaran on X Twitter @ciaranmullooly
SHARING OPTIONS: