Breaking down the barriers to volunteering at Sydney City Salvos
BY LAUREN MARTIN
Volunteering for The Salvation Army has long been a way for community members who seek assistance from the Salvos to gain skills, grow in confidence and better their lives – as well as to ‘give back’. But for some, volunteering is inaccessible.
As the Volunteer Coordinator for Sydney City Salvos Corps (formerly Sydney Congress Hall), Belinda Clark is on a mission to break down these barriers.
When she wanted to onboard a community member who was passionate about volunteering but was experiencing homelessness through street sleeping, she found the process difficult because the person didn’t have access to any form of identification.
“[I realised that] this was a massive barrier, and it was frustrating for me,” she said. “So, I wanted to do something about it.”
Belinda began discussions with colleagues and then worked with The Salvation Army’s Volunteer Resources team to devise the Facilitated Volunteer Program. This program is designed to support community members who experience barriers to volunteering, such as being unable to undergo a police check.
Applicants to the program are invited to an information session and go through a supported application process, which includes an interview.
“Even though the interview is informal, we still do one to give our participants the experience,” said Belinda, adding that one community member was so excited to be a participant in the program he arrived half an hour early to the application process, wearing a full suit! “He was so excited; he was punching the air and dancing when he was offered his placement in the program.”
Once onboarded, volunteers work for 1.5 hours on a Thursday afternoon at the Sydney City Salvos op-shop alongside volunteer facilitators. The facilitators tailor each volunteer’s work based on their skills, passions and abilities.
Jason’s self-confidence boost
Jason, who’s been connecting with Sydney City Salvos’ Streetlevel Mission for many years, operates the guillotine to cut the price tags for the op-shop to the right size.
“It’s good for me and good for the Salvos,” he said. “It gives me something to do.
“I’m a ‘lone wolf’, but this gives me a chance to explore different options … than what I’m used to, and it breaks the monotony and breaks that rut that I was in.”
Since he began volunteering with the Facilitated Volunteer Program, he has also started attending the centre’s leisure activities groups, which run every morning during the week. A fellow volunteer in the program, Paul, said he has noticed a difference in Jason since he began volunteering.
“I’ve known Jason for nearly two years, but what I see in him [now] is his skills with his language has improved greatly, his self-confidence, and his presentation. That is not just a credit to himself, but also the staff here because they really encourage and seek for individuals to find that passion within themselves and see the potential that they have.”
Paul began his journey with the Salvos two years ago at Foster House, an inner-city men’s homelessness service, where he detoxed and became clean and sober. But, after leaving the service, he said he experienced a “dark night of the soul” journey, during which he realised that he could only do so much on his own and needed to reach out and connect with supportive people again.
“I came back to Streetlevel and started to reconnect more and more with staff members and with other people who were coming in off the street, and really just re-engaging with society and community as a whole,” he said.
Being part of the Facilitated Volunteer Program has allowed him to connect with his passion for the written word (he looks after sorting and shelving the books in the op-shop) and has built his self-confidence.
“Staff members have said, ‘Find your people, find your passion’, and doors started opening for me, and the volunteering started happening for me through Belinda here, so I jumped on that. Almost immediately, another job offer came in … and I’ve got an interview.”
For Paul, connecting with faith communities through Sydney City Salvos has also been transformational.
“I’m grateful that I have God in my life. I attend church that the Salvos run here every Sunday, and that, for me, has been paramount to keeping me level-headed and keeping my soul nourished.”
Intensive support key to transformation
For Belinda, one of the most important aspects is that participants in the Facilitated Volunteer Program work alongside a trained volunteer facilitator.
“A lot of the volunteers [in the program] have never done anything like this before,” she said. “Most of them have never worked, certainly they haven’t had good experiences in schooling etc. So, we are supporting them the whole way.”
Sydney City Salvos has an extensive volunteer base of work-placement students who can step into the volunteer facilitator role and come alongside each participant with encouragement and support.
Emily Blackstock, an advisor with The Salvation Army’s Volunteer Resources team, describes the program as an intensive discipleship journey.
“We love this idea,” she said. “It does reflect a lot on what’s already happening [at our corps and centres], but this is more supported.
“You’ve got faith pathways, skill building … it has all these fantastic ticks, and it just suits The Salvation Army. We want to see transformed lives, and I’m hoping we see transformed lives in terms of [the people involved gaining] skill sets and the feeling that they have things to contribute, and also transformation because they meet Jesus when they are here.”
The Volunteer Resources team is working with Sydney City Salvos to develop a delivery package so that other corps and centres can easily implement a Facilitated Volunteer Program in their contexts.
For more information on International Volunteer Day (5 December), click here
