September blog

Blog September

Now I’ve been thinking back to September and couldn’t remember much so I looked over some old e-mails and it turns out, not that much happened to tell you all about!
However, at the start of the month I did, with my ever dependable Batman, Sam, organise a weekend conference for all the volunteers in NTT. At the time this was about 20 or so and we had to organise the entire weekend (accommodation, food, sessions etc) at about 3 weeks’ notice and on an incredibly small budget. Just to give you an idea of the scale of this, in 2008 they started planning nine months in advance of the same event!
Firstly, I should explain about the nature of volunteers. Although I love them all dearly, they can be a little difficult to organise. One of the qualities they look for when recruiting is being independent minded. You have to be to survive working in such odd conditions plus it actually makes them very good company and they are great to have around because they are always up for doing things/going places etc. However, it does make events such of this a little difficult.

I should further explain, I know that people do this because I have been one of the volunteers being organised at an event. But at such things, the majority of volunteers will, at some point in the day:
1) Criticise some element of organisation
2) Tell you how they would have done it better
3) Make some sarcastic joke at the organisers expense
Now I should reinforce, I know this because I have been someone who has done exactly that and truth be told, it’s not that bigger a deal on an individual basis and actually is normally pretty helpful and even if it isn’t, you have to be used to a bit of light ribbing. However what you forget is that when you say these things, you are just one of 20 people saying them which means even if everyone only says two out of these three, that makes forty comments a day, which kind of wears you down a bit!
Like I say, it’s really not a criticism, just a fact of life and I think is probably the same whichever group of people you get together!
But all in all, it went pretty well and people seemed to have fun and enjoy it which was the important thing. It did wear me out quite a lot though because we had to do a lot of organisation ‘on the hop’ plus just the two days solid of facilitating various sessions would have worn me out a fair bit! So all in all was ready for another holiday (having barely got back from Alor) but instead got to go back to my office and sit and read yet more medical records.......