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The benefits to organisations can be huge –
I mean from local councils to organisations that deliver services or even products,
if they think about their target group,
it’s not a mono-cultural target group.
So if they have CALD volunteers working alongside them
that offers them a really great chance
to learn about the communities
that they are trying to reach, so that they can truly understand their communities.
It also means that they can reach those communities
so we’ve had great experiences of CALD volunteers
who will go out and promote our services that we’re offering, or our programs.
And they do it at bus stops, they do it at train stations,
they grab other members of their community;
they can speak to them in their own language
and they know how to draw them in.
So that’s the benefit to organisations.
And then on the other hand, you have the community members
that are getting access to resources that they might otherwise not have known about.
And then for the individuals that volunteer, of course,
they’re getting that experience and boosting their confidence
because they’re getting an opportunity to show
that they can do this really well, and get to see their successes.
Well something that can be difficult with volunteers is filling their time
and that’s something that often makes staff members a little bit apprehensive
about having a volunteer with them.
So we find that if you find yourself at that stage,
it often really helps to actually sit down with the volunteer
and ask them about what their ideas are and what they’ve observed,
and often they actually can see things that they can do
and have come up with some really great ideas themselves
but don’t feel comfortable to share them or to direct their tasks.
So that’s something that often works.
Another one is to have a list of tasks up your sleeve
that often your own staff members don’t get time to do
– so things like creating resources, or doing networking
or calling around other organisations, resource mapping –
those kind of timely tasks that paid staff members
often don’t get chances to do.
It often helps to check for understanding when you are working with culturally diverse volunteers,
especially if their English language isn’t as strong.
So something that can help is, if you explain a task
that you would like a volunteer to do,
finish off that conversation with a question like
"So what are first three things you’ll do to get that task done?"
to make sure that you know they’ve got a start.
Something we find that it helps to pair volunteers with someone they know.
That can increase their confidence
and they’ve got someone to support them throughout the day.
Another thing we’ve found when we work with culturally diverse volunteers
is to actually get them to keep a diary
so each day they keep a record of the new tasks they’ve learned that day.
And this is actually beneficial for the volunteer as well as the organisation
because you can both look back and realise
how valuable it has been to both of you
to have the placement.