Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Irrelevant Volunteer II

This blog is written mostly tongue in cheek. Some points may be informative. Please provide your feedback.
If you suffer from self-irrelevancy, please seek professional advice.

Hello. Why are volunteers underappreciated? Why can volunteering be a thankless, payless job? Because volunteers are perceived as irrelevant.
How come? Usually volunteers do a task someone else is very capable of doing. Because a volunteer usually doesn't bring a specific, hard-to-find skill to the table, the organizers seem to think the effort is no big deal, because anyone can do that task.
Also, the organizer-volunteer interaction can be perceived as a master-slave relationship. Questioning an organizer is perceived many times as sacreligious. What do you mean you know a better way, you worthless slave. We've been doing it this way for years. And we know what we're doing. Just ask us. And not only are you off your rocker for bringing up this question; you may also be even less intelligent than we thought you were. However, we don't care, because if you decide to quit we can replace your irrelevant self pretty quickly.
It may not be corret, but it does get a point across. Please treat your volunteers with respect. Make them feel relevant.

Regards,
Irrelevant

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