Loving your volunteers while serving your community - Dorking Christian Centre
Most churches and Christian projects use volunteers, but how do you view them? Dorking Christian Centre run a community cafe with a volunteer team and made a major shift - involving changing job descriptions and providing training - to seeing that team as much a part of their mission as the cafe customers. Clair Fisher, the centre director explains...
It is usual for Christian organisations to rely heavily on the volunteer. Increasingly as the idea of the Big Society and budget constraints mean that the third sector bears more of the burden of providing services to the vulnerable and needy, volunteers are being called upon to fill the gap. But what about volunteers who are themselves needy and vulnerable? What about volunteers who don’t fit neatly into the ‘Big Society’ model of a professional volunteer? Is it possible to run an organisation using volunteers, where loving the volunteer is an integral part of the mission? I believe it is, and we’re trying to live that out at the Dorking Christian Centre.
The Centre was established more than thirty years ago when an old Methodist Chapel was sold, and the funds raised used to develop an Anglican Church Hall into a Community Centre that was to be ‘a sphere of Christian influence to the people of Dorking’. Today we continue to be a ‘tangible expression of God’s Kingdom’ as we host a variety of community groups and organisations in our building. At the heart of our mission is a Community Cafe. We serve tea, coffee and cake in the mornings, and then good traditional lunches, all at very reasonable prices. We are open to the public, but our customers tend to be those who are lonely, elderly, or vulnerable in some way.
The amazing thing is that the Cafe is staffed entirely by volunteers; even our cooks are volunteers. This cadre of about 40 individuals are organised in morning and lunch shifts across a monthly rota. When I first came to the organisation a couple of years ago, I was frustrated by the amount of time the office managers spent ‘looking after the volunteers’. But I’ve come to see that the time, love, and effort that goes into supporting our volunteers, and accommodating their needs is actually an integral part of our mission.
Looking for a safe space - working with 'non-professional' volunteers
The difficulty with the concept of the professional volunteer is that it doesn’t recognise that there is generally a reason why people aren’t already at work during the day. There are some volunteers who are stay at home mums with free time in the day, or recently retired and still very competent individuals, but my experience is that these are few and far between. More often those that come to us to volunteer do so because they want a safe space that provides security and purpose. They often have been excluded from the workplace because of ill health, learning difficulties, or depression.
In the Centre our volunteers find a loving welcome. This week our Centre manager spent half an hour looking at a personal photo album of one of our volunteers. Is this time wasted, or time invested? The volunteer in question has suffered a complicated family breakdown and wanted to reminisce about her estranged family. Others rely on the managers to help them organise benefits, sort housing issues, or mediate contact with social services.
In the past couple of years we’ve made efforts to formally recognise the value of investing in, and loving, our volunteers. The managers have had their job descriptions changed to include this pastoral role, and have been offered relevant training. We’ve developed a volunteer handbook, and programme of training to support our volunteers. In Christmas parties, and birthday presents, we recognise that we fill the role of ‘family’ more than ‘employer’ in many of the volunteers’ lives. We now welcome referrals from ‘Workability’ and the Volunteer Bureau; often referrals are made to us because they know of the extra love and care that we offer.
Our Centre manager spent half an hour looking at a personal
photo album of one of our volunteers. Is this time wasted, or time
invested?
The balance between customers and volunteers
There have been success stories. One girl worked with us for a few months after having am emotional breakdown. She found her confidence restored, and has now gone back into full time employment. With the amazing support of the local church Minister we are able to offer some individuals more specific pastoral care. But there are challenges too. We always put our volunteers on the rotas in pairs. The managers have to diplomatically and sensitively pair some of our more vulnerable volunteers with more able and patient individuals. Sometimes, there is the difficult moment where we have to carefully manage the ‘retirement’ of some of our elderly volunteers.
Going forward we have big dreams for the Centre, and would love to see the Cafe developed. I am really clear that being a Christian organisation does not give us an excuse to be mediocre. I want us to be excellent at what we do; excellent at loving our vulnerable volunteers, and also excellent at delivering a quality service to our customers. There may be a tension here, but I believe that we can find a way to hold these things together, and that the benefits will be worth it.
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Clair Fisher
Director, Dorking Christian Centre, October 2010.