I was trying to keep out of this conversation, but it's got to the point where I feel I have to add my bit.
[quote name='John Hudson' date='16 January 2010 - 07:49 PM' timestamp='1263671379' post='10440']
When exactly do you think/expect people to come forward and volunteer? Generally people respond to something - on the whole no-one cared about Haiti last week, but now they do? Does that make the donation and volunteers helping there now any less important or welcome? Does it really matter what their motives if they are able to actually make a difference out there?
Does it really matter if they dont subsequently turn up to a weekly/monthly meeting or even dont renew in a following year? I'm sure if push came to shove they'd be there to help you next time??? Or does the lack of club commitement mean that their help would no longer be welcome?[/quote]
Sounds to me like you're just like far too many people around, more than willing to sit back and let others put in all the hard work, making it easy for you to be able to turn up for the glory bits.
And don't get me wrong, we don't mind putting in the hours to make sure this type of service can be provided, and if pushed, and if the need arose, I'm sure you would get called out even if your membership had expired.
[quote name='John Hudson' date='16 January 2010 - 07:49 PM' timestamp='1263671379' post='10440']
As an unproven and untested group I think you'd be laughed out of town if you tried to get sponsorship from government, but off the back of events like we have recently seen, I'm sure you'd have a really good conversation starter if you arranged to go and talk to those local emergency planning officer, etc, you'd just been getting calls from. Yes money is tight everywhere, but you never know what they might be able to do until you ask.
[/quote]
As obviously you haven't got a clue about how all this works, the reason we are being called out isn't because the emergency planning officers found our number in the yellow pages, it's because people have been putting in the effort to arrange meetings with the aforementioned emergency planning officers, as well as lots of other organizations that could benefit from from our help, arranging all the paper work to ensure call outs are carried out properly, spent the time and effort putting systems in place to ensure that we can supply what's needed to keep our local communities running.
Finally if you do end up getting called to help, so that people can see you driving around in your big 4x4 doing something good for a change, just spare a thought for the people sitting in front of a computer, organizing it all, who've spent most of the year putting hours of effort in just so you can get that call.
I haven't put this on here expecting a big pat on the back for what we do, we do it because we want to help, and we want to make a difference (All the time!!!).
Rant over, I'm outta here.
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