‘For all the multi-million pound hype, the fact is that the Olympics depends on tens of thousands of ordinary people working for free….’
The estimate is that 70,000 individuals are needed as volunteers in a multitude of support roles from the meeters-and-greeters out in the city to the assistants at the trackside, including the one with the rake at the long jump pit (1).
The logistics of recruiting and organising them all are ulcer-inducing – just suppose they don’t turn up! – but actually manageable. There is a body of professional knowledge and competence in the national agency Volunteering England (2) and its network of local volunteer bureaux and development agencies as well as in thousands of sports and voluntary organisations.
The number may not be as formidable as it first sounds. It is small proportion of those who volunteer annually: the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey concluded that 51 per cent of the population, or 20.3 million, were engaged in civic participation or volunteering (3). The largest UK volunteer-involving agency Community Service Volunteers (CSV) places well over 110,000 volunteers a year, about 50,000 for its annual Make a Difference Day (4).
The organisers of volunteers will also draw on the International Olympics Committee’s Transfer of Knowledge programme, offering an extranet of reports, plans and information as well as seminars and meetings (5). The experience of former organisers can also be incorporated just as, for instance, the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) service of New South Wales helped train the volunteers for the Athens Olympics (6).
In short, the task can be done. And when we look back from September 2012, the end-result will lift the spirit. In this amateur endeavour, we will identify the resilience of humanity, more so - I hope - than in the merchandising of the stars, the professionalism of the athletes.
The anxiety is not that the people won’t volunteer. They will … we will….
Just as 45-50,000 volunteers came forward for Sydney and Athens (7). It was reported that a year before the Athens Games 120,000 people had applied to volunteer (8). At present, 20,000 volunteers are being recruited for the Turin Winter Games 2006 (9).
The anxiety should be, I suggest, if opportunities for equitable and representative volunteering were not taken, as a basis for a ‘sustainable Olympics’ (10). So, I attempt here to sketch some questions to be addressed.
If this great volunteering opportunity is marketed as a commodity, it will - without meaning to or probably even noticing until it is too late - exclude classes of people whom the Games in East London should aim to involve. It will also do nothing for the Government’s commitments to social inclusion and active citizenship.
How will the volunteers be representative of the communities who live near the Olympics site, whose lives will be disrupted and whose support is needed? How will differently abled people be enabled to volunteer and play an equal part? How will all the diverse communities be included?
Unless these questions are seriously faced, the Olympics will reproduce on a historic scale the exclusionary tendencies of volunteering (11). Experience of other volunteering initiatives demonstrates that if recruitment is driven just by quantitative targets, it is likely that the volunteers will represent the continuing social inequities.
And if recruitment relies on the ever-reliable method of ‘word of mouth’, it tends to replicate the friendships, networks and even cliques and hence class and ethnic dominance. And if recruitment identifies faith-based groups as a way of reaching the hard-to-reach communities, it has to work out how to access other faiths as much as Christianity.
The Olympics needs to learn lessons from previous volunteering initiatives about dismantling the obstacles which lie in the way of disabled people and people from black and minority ethnic communities and from other faiths (12).
The recruitment must be connected to a deliberate, planned and wearing-out-your-trainers project of community development, of outreach and payback.
Volunteering isn’t just giving time. The concept of volunteering has shifted from emphasising the ‘gift relationship’ and the altruistic impulse to regarding volunteering as an ‘exchange relationship’. What does the volunteer get back?
There needs to be strategy for working with the various reasons why people volunteer and their likely causes of satisfaction.
Some will be satisfied with a thank-you and a badge - and the fun of being there when history was made or there was a buzz in the air. Some will gain satisfaction through service.
Some will seek, and maybe find, a sense of belonging or a means of structuring their days, which may set them up for the rest of life. The engagement may help some people to reinvent themselves and find new being.
Some will be looking to gain skills which will help them into employment or continuing their education and training. They will want something for the CV. Some people will need training for their Olympics roles, and a system of certification will need to be developed.
Some will be asking for resources or recognition for their group, so the payback is collective rather than individual. A first demand in poor communities may be funds for community facilities.
Having recruited the volunteers, the ways they are managed will need to give them satisfaction.
Volunteering for the Olympics will need to provide a good time - and not just for the after-glow. Although some volunteers may only be needed for two or three months active service, others will be needed for the lead-in years, and all will need to be involved some months or even years before the Games starts.
The evidence is fairly clear that what most puts off volunteers is being badly organised (13), not making good use of their time. Initial enthusiasm for the cause is not enough to keep them feeling satisfied
Lessons of other volunteering about making good use of volunteers’ time need to be applied - though the evidence of what works is less clear and the factors are complex (14). It appears that volunteers are sustained by a congruence between their own wishes and intentions and those of the organisation. Some volunteers flourish where the organisation offers a framework for self-development but some people are sustained by the camaraderie in stuffing envelopes.
Getting the management right and appropriate for the different motivations, will matter, too, for the legacy.
What is the inheritance for voluntary action?
The question of the legacy is central to the issue of volunteering, as to other debates here (15). How will the management of volunteering and all those 70,000 experiences leave an asset for future voluntary action in East London and beyond?
From the start, it is essential to develop new volunteer resources and enable new volunteers, and not to hoover up people who are already volunteering somewhere else – not to take people away from local voluntary and community organisations. And, as above, it is crucial not simply to fulfil ambitious targets by taking on board those people who are confident enough to volunteer anyway. A temptation to depend on world travellers and gap-year youth should be resisted.
The recruitment and management of volunteers for the Olympics has to face up to not taking the easy way. It will need to make some new and tough challenges for itself and do things the hard way. There are a lot of streets to cover - a distance runner should understand!
How does the London Olympics plan take this opportunity to extend voluntary action and to leave behind not just a huge sigh of relief but stronger processes and stronger people to continue the struggle of making a better world?
Mike Locke is Reader and Director at the Centre for Institutional Studies, School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London, and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Volunteering Research. Email: m.locke@uel.ac.uk.
© 2004·05
“It is essential to enable new volunteers, and not hoover up people who are already volunteering somewhere else”
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