Oral history interview with John Lomond of ACE Cardiff, Cardiff, 14 February 2017

Disgrifiad

Interview with John Lomond, the volunteering and administration officer of ACE Cardiff in which he gives details about his volunteer work leading into his current position at ACE, and also describes some of the projects and programs ACE has to offer. Before becoming the volunteering and administration officer at ACE, John was a volunteer with ACE, VCS Cymru, and Radio Cardiff.

ACE Cardiff was created in 2006 by Gerry Puttock and began their work by helping people who were unemployed get into work. The charity has continued to evolve over the years to meet the needs of Butetown and in 2010 the Learning Club at ACE was opened. Since then, numerous other projects and programs continue to serve Butetown and surrounding areas.

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The Chronicle Project is a community heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and run by VCS Cymru with the aims to document the history of volunteering in Cardiff, from 1914 to 2014.

Visit our website at: http://chronicle.recueil.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chronicleVCS/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vcs_chronicle

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This recording is being collected as an oral history and will be part of the Chronicle project, a project led by VCS Cymru and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

RB = Rachel Belsham (interviewer), JL = John Lomond (interviewee)

RB: If you’d introduce yourself now?

[0:16 – 0:34 : John introduces himself]

JL: Okay. My name is John Lomond. I’m the volunteer coordinator at ACE Cardiff which stands for All Communities Engaged. We’re a Charity in Butetown that works with children in learning clubs as well as a couple of other projects but that is the main one with which I’m involved.

RB: Could you tell us a bit more about this project?

[0:38 – 1:17: How the learning clubs started]

JL: Sure yeah. So it started about seven years ago because parents in the Butetown area kind of needed some support with their children who were kind of falling a bit behind in school. We set up some homework clubs initially with the director trying to teach the children but he realised himself that he wasn’t very good at doing it so we brought in a bunch of volunteers. Initially they came from the… where did they come from? It was one of the universities. University of South Wales I think and basically they took over the role of teaching the children.

RB: And so how many of these clubs are there a week?

[1:23 – 1:56 : How many learning clubs the ACE runs]

JL: We have about three sessions per week. Well actually it’s a bit tricky because initially we have about three sessions per week that are organised directly by us but then we’ve recently made a partnership with Cardiff Sixth Form College and they support us by getting involved in various other homework clubs with which we kind of we say we have a partnership I guess. So in total it could be about seven or eight of them round the sort of Butetown, Riverside and Grangetown area.

RB: And what motivated you personally to get involved with the project?

[2:01 – 3:03 : How John got involved with ACE]

JL: To be honest with you it was when I was volunteering initially. I was looking for some experience in office environment. That sounds really boring but I hadn’t really got much experience with that kind of admin area. It’s kind of something to show on my CV that I’d got office experience. Obviously, that sounds a bit cynical to begin with but, you know, I like the fact that it was a charity, I like the fact that they were supporting children with education because I think that’s a great thing for people who are, you know, not otherwise able to get the support they need. So yeah it began in a bit of a kind of self-beneficial way but obviously that is often the case with volunteering which I’ve since learned in my role now. But I soon grew to really appreciate the work that we’re doing, going along to the learning clubs. I didn’t initially go along to them a lot myself but when I did I saw like the work the volunteers were doing and it was really making a difference.

RB: So in your role you come into contact with lots of volunteers. Do they all have different motivations for getting involved with the project?

[3:11 – 4:16 : Motivations for volunteering]

JL: Yeah, the motivations of the volunteers are quite varied. I mean you do kind of find sort of little pockets of categories which people often fit into. So, for example, because we’re running learning clubs and there’s a chance to teach, you’ll often get people who are looking for teaching experience so students who don’t really know what they want to do once they graduate come along and get some experience in case they want to go into teaching. But we often get people who are retired and looking for something to give back. We’ve got a couple of retired teachers on our volunteering staff and they, yeah, they just want to do something with their time but obviously use experience they have. So, but then you often find which, you know, I don’t have a preference necessarily. Anyone who wants to volunteer is great but you often kind of get people who don’t really do any specific reason. They just kind of wake up one day and decide they want to do some volunteering. So there is something quite interesting about that because they can come from quite varied backgrounds so you kind of get a lot of different types of people so that’s really interesting.

RB: Have you noticed… Is there a noticeable impact on the wider community?

[4:23 – 5:30 : Impact on the wider community]

JL: We hope so. I mean it’s something that we look at quite a lot, the impact that we’re making. It’s something that is quite difficult to measure what we’re doing because we’re helping with education and it’s supporting people who might not otherwise be getting the support they need but at the same time they are also going to school and so they might be getting their education there. So, it’s kind of difficult to say what exactly we’re doing if you kind of look at a community and say oh we made a huge difference there but it’s the kind of feel you get from it when you’re at the sessions watching the kind of involvement of the volunteers, the engagement the children are getting when they’re really enjoying education. And I think that’s something that is really important. I mean, I’m not going to pretend that they’re loving every second of it because they are sometimes sent there by their parents and they probably want to be home playing video games or something. But the times where you kind of catch some real spark between the volunteers and the children is, yeah, when I really feel like we’re definitely doing something important here.

RB: And do you feel that you’ve got know the community better through this role?

[5:35 – 6:34 : Getting to know the community]

JL: Absolutely. I’ll be honest that I’d kind of bought into some of the negative views of Butetown before I started working there. I never really had much reason to go down there and there are some really negative stereotypes of the area; it’s kind of dangerous to be in, that sort of thing. But having worked there I’ve obviously got a lot more involved, especially with the children. I attend one of our sessions now each week in a kind of admin role – not in a teaching role – but it means you get to interact with the children on a week-to-week basis, you get to interact with the parents. There is sometimes a bit of a language barrier in that sense but, nonetheless, you’re chucked right into the middle of the community and you get to see there’s some, you know, really lovely people there and it’s a perfectly safe place to be. And, you know, I feel a little bit embarrassed about my attitude beforehand but that’s good. You know, it’s kind of something that’s opened my eyes to a different community, something that I really wasn’t part of before and now happy to be involved in.

RB: You mentioned the parents, so is there quite a lot of contact with them?

[6:39 – 8:00 : Connecting with the parents through the ESOL project]

JL: Erm, there is less than we’d like. Erm, we do try to make contact with the parents on a regular basis for various reasons. One for the sort of evaluation of our work. It’s good to get feedback from the kids; it’s also good to get feedback from the parents to see that they feel like we’re making a difference but unfortunately they – I don’t know for whatever reason – don’t necessarily want to get involved with us. As I mentioned there is an issue with a language barrier. A lot of the parents are from immigrant backgrounds: Somali and Yemeni backgrounds. And they don’t necessarily speak English. Actually one of our other projects is an ESOL project to attempt to teach English to the parents of the children from the learning clubs. But because they’re not very confident in their speaking English abilities they often don’t want to interact with us, you know, because they’re embarrassed or whatever. So if they turn up at the sessions, they’ll often translate through the children which is fine for sort of administrative reasons but not brilliant for getting their feedback about the children because the children are probably translating that they are doing brilliantly in school. So we don’t necessarily get quite the interaction we would like but that’s something we are always looking to improve on.

RB: Are there other areas that the charity is looking to branch out into?

[8:06 – 9:25 : how the charity has evolved]

JL: Well, again it’s something the sort of the areas we work in is always something we are looking at because we started out – well I wasn’t there at the time I’ve only been there about three years but – the charity started out helping people who were struggling to find employment and it was basically just helping them writing CVs, helping with job interview prep and that sort of thing. And it has evolved since then so obviously it’s important we do evolve because we’ve quite dramatically changed what we do since then. We no longer really do anything employment based. Erm, so yeah, it is important for us to kind of not necessarily branch out but just kind of keep an eye on things that are needed in the community. The ESOL project came from, as I say, the parents off the children needing the help but that project sort of disappeared for a little while because we didn’t have the support to make it work. But we were continually getting phone calls from people saying are you still running the ESOL project. Enough so that we eventually thought well, you know, there is clearly a need for this. So we brought it back in; we looked at how we could make it work and we managed to get some funding. So now we’re doing that again. So yeah we, yeah we’re looking to evolve and make sure that we’re providing services that are needed.

RB: What other projects are there other than the learning club and the ESOL project?

[9:30 – 10:42 : The charity’s work with the elderly and dementia patients ]

JL: Erm, the main other one we have is a dementia project called Watch My Needs which is about creating a sign language for people who are diagnosed with dementia because once the dementia progresses they are unable to speak or unable to speak verbally so the sign language helps them communicate with sign language using Makaton. And that’s something that it has been shown once they are no longer able to speak properly they can still communicate. It’s not that the mind has gone; it’s that they are just not able to physically speak so they are able to use sign language to communicate their needs basically. Because often it can be very simple problems, such as a pain somewhere that they can’t communicate that they need sorted out. Whereas if they have sign language they can continue to get their needs met. Just to say I think the other project that we’re not really doing so much anymore was a project with elderly people in care homes, providing technology to them. And volunteers would go in and help them do things like email and skype and that sort of thing but that one’s kind of faded away a little bit recently so.

RB: Is that because there is not necessarily the need for it anymore?

[10:45 – 11:24 : Volunteering in care homes]

JL: Well, what we found is that our role in it wasn’t necessarily needed. It’s still a great project but basically what we found is that the volunteers were coming to us, we would send them to the care home and that would be it. And what we found is actually they can just go straight to the care home. The care homes themselves do recruitment for that sort of thing. Volunteers go in and work with the residents. And really, I mean the thing that we were providing which was really helpful was technology. We would get some grants for iPads and computers so we still have our equipment in some of the care homes around Cardiff but we’ve kind of ceased our involvement so much with recruiting the volunteers because it’s time consuming and they could already do it via the care homes.

RB: Are there any frustrations or disappointments that you have while working in a charity?

[11:31 – 13:00 : The frustrations and disappointments associated with charity work]

JL: Erm, there are lots of frustrations and disappointments. No I mean, the biggest ones just come from the structural stuff or the sort of administrative stuff. Funding is always an issue. Anyone who works in a charity knows about that unless they work in a really big charity but even then I’m sure it’s an ongoing issue. We get bits of funding here and there but there’s always a struggle to kind of keep it consistent, keep it in a situation where we feel comfortable being, continue doing what we’re doing. Erm, I think probably I think most of the frustrations would stem from that in the sense that we don’t always have the money to do the things that we want. All of the learning club – the children’s project– is volunteer led but ideally we would actually like to pay some people in there. We have some incredible tutors who give up their time and not just time in session but time outside those sessions, who plan the sessions, prepare materials and all that sort of thing. And they give their own time for it and we’d love to be able to say look you’re doing more than is a volunteer’s role, we’d like to be able to pay you a tutor fee because that’s what people would normally get paid for that sort of work, you know. Erm, but unfortunately we don’t have the money so we’re very lucky to have the volunteers who do that but yeah it’s kind of you want to recognise someone doing incredible work so.

RB: So how would you define volunteering? What kind of roles do you think that would encompass?

[13:06 – 13:09]

JL: Do you mean within our the charity specifically? Or…?

RB:I mean this is a general question. I know it can be hard to think of on the spot.

[13:15 – 15:16 : How to define volunteering]

JL: Yeah okay, yeah. It’s I suppose… defining volunteering it’s… I suppose it would mean different things to different people. I think if you ask one of the volunteers they would talk about their experience so erm I don’t know I mean I think for me because I was volunteering to begin with before I well I was volunteering in this role before I got it paid for it but I was also volunteering in various other roles. Erm, for me it was a way to get experience; it was a way to grow myself confidence-wise while at the same time providing something in return for that. As a volunteer co-ordinator I always kinda feel like it should be a two way process. It’s lovely when people just give up their time for absolutely no reason but I still want to feel in that situation that they’re getting something out of it you know even if it’s just enjoyment; they feel like the community is improving because of them. So I feel like volunteering should be a situation where you have something to give but you’re also looking to build yourself in some way where it can be a mutually beneficial situation, whether that be confidence or experience which it often is in our case or just giving some people a place to go. Erm, there have been situations with volunteers who for whatever reason in their life just don’t have sort of anything to do during the day. They’re out of work but looking for work but still unemployed so they’ve got a lot of free time and that can be really sort of depressing basically you know. So giving a volunteer somewhere to go whether it be the learning club or we sometimes have office volunteers who pop in and just do a bit of work in the office but just so they have a weekly schedule and somewhere to go. I think that can be really important. People who are kind of in a emotionally quite low state and giving them a boost to feel like they can do more with their lives.

RB: So do you have any advice for current volunteers or people who are looking to volunteer in the future?

[15:24 – 15:29]

JL: Erm, they’re two separate things. Advice for people whether they should do it or not do you mean?

RB: Well yeah. Both but you can do one first if you want?

[15:36 – 16:35 : Advice for people looking to volunteer]

JL: Well I mean for people looking to I definitely say I mean I was thinking about if for a long time before I did it and in a weird way it was quite a nerve-wracking experience because I was out of work at the time so really just a lot of spare time on my hands so it’s quite daunting to walk in there and say you know I don’t have a lot of work experience I want to get more but I don’t really know what I want to do and yeah it’s basically just been up and up and up since then. It’s been a really positive experience and basically changed my life so I can definitely say it’s a good thing to do. I mean I recognise that not everyone is going to be in the same situation as me but I think if you feel an inkling that it could be something interesting to you it’s definitely worth giving it a go because there is probably something there you’re looking to improve in your life and there is quite likely a role a voluntary role that can help with that so. In terms of current volunteers what would you mean in what sense?

RB: I don’t know like anything you would say to encourage them or maybe erm encourage them to say yes to more opportunities or think about their development.

[16:47 – 18:23 : Advice for current volunteers]

JL: Erm, I would say. Well, I would say that you should be as a volunteer you’re kind of the advice I would give to current volunteers as opposed to knew volunteers is to be confident in what you want to get out of it. Erm, I suppose that applies to new volunteers to but like if you’re already volunteering and you kind of feel like you’ve plateaued and the situation is getting boring or you’re not feel like you’re not contributing anymore is to get more involved, ask for more roles, ask for more responsibility because as someone who works in an environment with volunteers there’s always a role for people who are already there who want to do more. Erm, incoming volunteers can be a bit different because you sort of don’t know what their abilities are, you don’t know what their confidence level or what they’re willing to do but with current volunteers you’ve already got a sense of them. So it can be a really great situation to be like you know having a volunteer coming in and saying ‘I want to do a bit more’. You’re like ‘perfect!’. I know about you already. I know what your skills are. I know where you could fit into the charity in a greater role. So, erm, volunteers being communicative with whoever their sort of volunteer co-ordinator is or whoever is in charge of handing out the roles because we can’t know necessarily if you’re not happy with the situation unless you tell us. Erm, so feedback is really important in that situation. So yeah just being a bit more confident and just sort of saying ‘I want more to do’ you know, if they want more to do.

RB: Okay. What’s your best memory of when you were volunteering?

[18:30 – 20:15 : John’s best experience while volunteering]

JL: Best memory. Erm, I’m not sure I can think of an individual one off the top of my head but when I was volunteering with Radio Cardiff. Well it was with VCS and Radio Cardiff as the organiser for the radio show that VCS used to do. Erm, well no I suppose do they still do it? I don’t know. I think it might have recently finished hasn’t it? Erm, Cardiff in Action? [It’s rebranding]. Rebranding there we go. I knew something was happening with it recently. Erm, but I used to organise the guests for that so I’ve been in contact with a lot of different charities and just meeting people each week from the charity who would come on the radio and talk about what they do. Erm, and it was really interesting every week just to get these different people from again lots of different backgrounds. I mean they were working with a charity so I suppose there was a common theme but they did they really varied. And actually thinking one just off the top of my head this guy used to come in with one charity that I can’t remember for the life of me which one it was because there were so many you know but there was this volunteer who had been volunteering with that charity for a long time twenty years or something like that and every time he came – because we had charities on multiple times – every time he came he came in a really smart pinstriped suit and it was just like that’s a great attitude you know that’ someone who’s, you know, I’d like to believe that the radio was doing a good thing but it’s definitely not the BBC or anything so someone turning up looking really classy was really a nice thing to happen, you know. It’s really cool that someone would make that effort to – I mean maybe he did it all the time but it’s nice that he came along looking like that. So yeah, meeting varied people at that role is a really nice experience.

RB: So other than that role have you had any other volunteering experiences?

[20:21 – 22:02 : John’s experience as a volunteer]

JL: Erm, the main bits have been with VCS and Radio Cardiff. I suppose Radio Cardiff is a voluntary role although that’s more of a kind of community involvement thing. I briefly volunteered at a charity called The Mentor Ring who have connections to ACE and that was sort of administrative stuff as well. They’re a really good charity who do mentoring for various people. So it’s again nice to be involved in something that felt like it was making a difference for people. And of course I volunteered with ACE for about 18 months to two years before I was actually working there in various roles, going in there to begin with really not knowing much at all about like how an office worked or anything like that so not necessarily being able to provide a lot but, you know, kind of chipping in here and there where they discovered I was useful, which often tended to be IT related stuff, and then gradually building up my involvement as I got more familiar with what the charity did and understood how I could fit into it more until eventually sort of taking on the role I’m doing now but on a more voluntary basis because there was no-one around to do it until eventually some funding coming in to pay me to do it. So really kind of working my way up. Again that sounds a little bit cynical in the sense of volunteering my way into a job but that was never my intention. It was always just like I want this experience; this is a really good charity so I’m just going to stay here while it’s mutually beneficial, that thing again. But it just so happened while I was there it was some funding came in and I was able to get paid, which is really nice.

LT: I have a quick question. You hinted at there being a difference between volunteering and community involvement. Do you want to elaborate?

[22:11 – 23:42 : Volunteering and when is it community engagement]

JL: Sure. Erm, I’m not sure there is a difference to be honest but just off the top of my head it seems like a different experience volunteering in a charity and volunteering at Radio Cardiff which up until recently was not technically a charity. It was just well an organisation who have volunteers involved but they it’s a really good community really Radio Cardiff so I don’t want to sort of take away anything from it but it was people sort of building something that they really liked, so like speaking on the radio or somehow being involved in the radio. I felt like that was more like people getting out of it than necessarily putting in but that’s not right either because the community of volunteers put together made up a great situation. But it just it feels slightly different in terms of the outcomes I suppose. It wasn’t necessarily helping anyone directly that wasn’t necessarily the aims of it although it did as a side product help people like me who were wanting to get experience, wanting to build confidence and meet new people. It was a great experience for me to be involved in it and it achieved all those things. But I wouldn’t don’t know if they necessarily have the aim to do that. It’s a radio station; their aim is to broadcast music and that sort of thing. So, as I’m saying that they do have community engagement sort of remit so yeah I don’t know it’s a tricky one. In my head I always kind of made them separate but as I’m talking about I suppose yeah in a way they have quite similar goals really.

LT: I think it’s a something that’s an ongoing thing that we find in these interviews that there are some people who lump those things together then there are other strictly defined.

RB: In a way what you’re talking with the radio sort of reminds me of more like maybe a university society like radio show where it’s kind of like people coming together and okay they’re not being paid for it but they’re kind of doing something they enjoy. It’s almost like a hobby.

[24:09 – 25:04 : Volunteering and hobbies]

JL: Yeah, I think this is it. I think that’s a good word. It’s a hobby. They kind of did feel something more about it that not necessarily using your skills because I didn’t have any when I first went there but using your kind of enjoyment as the thing to carry you through it rather than like the learning club for people coming along the goal is to help children. If you get some of that experience or that place to be as a side product that’s really good and important but there’s an end goal whereas as you say a hobby seems to make sense for the radio because everyone there loves radio and loves being involved in some way whether it be on air or off air. So yeah I think. Yeah because I definitely wouldn’t say you go along to the learning club as a hobby. It’s definitely a thing you are looking to support people and also get something back from in the process of doing it.

RB: Have you found that your past volunteering roles have helped you in your role now like working with volunteers?

[25:12 – 26:37 : How John’s previous experience as a volunteer has helped him in his current role]

JL: Erm, Has it helped me? Yeah I mean I think just in a general sense it has helped me because it gave me some confidence to speak to people as I mentioned that role of greeting and organising the interviews for VCS and Radio Cardiff. That’s something I’d never done before really, sort of interaction with people like that. So that built up my confidence to then speak to the volunteers which I have to do on a regular basis. I’m not really a huge people person so having not exactly been forced to do that but dropping myself in a situation where I was that was needed that built up my confidence. That helped. Erm, I suppose being a volunteer myself erm gives me both sides of it. Erm yeah so I mean I think… I like to think that even if I dropped straight into this role I wouldn’t have ever been taken advantage of the volunteers but being in a volunteer role I guess I can appreciate that sort of, you know, you are there giving your own time so you kind of reach a limit of okay I’ve done enough and I’m going to go home now and that’s perfectly fine because you know I’m not being paid to be here and this as I say needs to be a mutual thing so as the volunteer co-ordinator I am always aware of that. So I suppose I suppose that’s helped to give me both vantage points.

RB: Do the volunteers interact much socially outside their volunteering role?

[26:43 – 28:47 : Social interaction between the volunteers]

JL: Erm, not as much as I’d like. And that’s my fault to be honest. It’s a tricky thing to do because there’s quite a big bunch of volunteers. There’s about 50 of our volunteers over the sort of various classes that we run. That includes the learning club and also the ESOL project has volunteers involved. Erm, yeah they don’t actually do much as far as I know unless they are kind of arranging it themselves. We do organise socials from time to time but the issue with that is it’s really nice if a lot of people who are doing the same sort of thing get to know each other a bit more but they do kind of need a bit of a catalyst to help those that engagement between each other grow or make friendships or whatever. So we’ve had a couple of socials and as I’ve said I’m not a big people person but there hasn’t been enough engagement like that. We’ve found that the best things to do are events is like doing events like bowling or something like that but then the problem with that is then they don’t necessarily speak to each other because they’re busy bowling or whatever. So it’s quite a difficult thing to get them together and then get them talking and opening up to each other and sharing experiences and sharing just little things like where they live like I was having a conversation with a couple of volunteers the other day who realised that they both live on the same street and it was like one of them was driving home every time after the session and the other one was getting public transport. It’s like if we’d realised that they could have been giving lifts this whole time so erm. But we actually had just last night we had an event which was aimed to sort of help us decide the future of ACE because we’re always a little bit unclear about what we’re doing and we want more defined, defined goals basically. And that brought a lot of our volunteers and there was sort of unanimous agreement that we need to do more of that stuff because people really enjoyed hanging out and chatting to each other and getting to know each other. We are going to try and do more of that and I think it’s something that is really important.

RB: Have you got any ideas for how you’re going to improve that?

[28:50 – 29:29 : New ways to encourage social interaction ]

JL: Well, one idea did come up yesterday which was to do a pub quiz which I think actually that’s a brilliant idea I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before because it’s a really good way of putting people in a group but giving them a kind of topic to talk about so it’s not just kind of you know awkward silences or difficulty thinking about what to discuss and a regular event as well pub quiz at the beginning of the month every month and then there’s just a constant thing that they can go to and I don’t need to be organising everyone and trying finding a perfect date when they’re all available and just be like come along first Monday of the month we’ll be there every month and that makes it a lot easier so hopefully I’m going to try and organise that.

RB: That sounds like a good idea.

JL: Yeah, I hope it works

RB: So do you feel like you’ve changed a lot due to the volunteering.

[29:38 – 30:58 : John’s personal development at ACE]

JL: Yeah, I’ve definitely changed a lot. Erm, I don’t know how other people would sort of come into the role, what their sort of experience is beforehand and what they’re looking to gain so you know the difference it would make to a person could be a sort of big slope or just a gradual thing that’s still important but for me I was coming from a place of you know for various reasons not having worked for a little while, erm really not very confident and had very little work experience, really looking to improve all the areas of my working life like that and it’s been life changing as I said because I’ve come from not working and not having any confidence about dealing with people to now being in a job where I’m getting paid to interact with people daily. And it’s something I still struggle with as a person who as I say isn’t great necessarily speaking to people but it’s something I’ve improved massively with and is not just within myself, I definitely feel it from myself but people even like at ACE who have just known me for might be recent trustees who have come who have just known me for about a year say they can see it in me within the last year so it’s, well I guess it’s since I’ve been being paid but you know, it’s a gradual rise that’s included the payment period.

RB: Do you see your developing as well?

[31:03 – 32:03 : Volunteers’ personal development]

JL: Yeah, erm again, it differs depending on who the volunteer is erm but you kind of see for example the development in the tutors who kind of come in without necessarily having any teaching experience before. Erm, they kind of drop into the role obviously we monitor them to make sure that they’re comfortable with it and doing okay but you can see them sort of starting out quite timid a bit shy with the class til six months later when they’re kind of walking in there and taking command of the class and you see real differences in experience in that sort of sense. Erm, yeah, as I say it differs per person in how it can change. Sometimes it’ll be more subtle just that sense of someone coming into the office perhaps to get experience with just, like I was basically, just getting experience being in an office in a working environment like that and seeing them become more confident, able to take phone calls, that sort of thing so yeah constantly seeing differences in that sense.

RB: And have you kept in touch with many of the people you have worked with over the years?
[32:08 – 33:32 : Keeping in touch with former colleagues]
JL: Erm, yes to some degree. The funny thing about the third sector is that a lot of people bump into each other a lot of the time even if you don’t intend to. I mean obviously there are a lot of people I would intent to keep in contact with but sometimes you just lose touch and then you bump into them again, like for example Klavdija is someone I chat to a lot when I was volunteering at VCS but then we didn’t chat for a long time and then randomly bumped into each other in the street a couple of months back and it was just like ‘oh this is really nice we should go or a coffee we haven’t seen each other in ages’ so. There are some people that I haven’t kept in contact with which I really should have done you know so. And then there are other ones who I’m seeing on off on a fairly regular basis just for whatever reason, so for example Jeremy who runs VCS. Obviously I don’t see him as much anymore, but I still bump into him now that VCS are based at Radio Cardiff so that’s really nice. And then Nathan Williams who used to work at VCS now works at a charity called Promo Cymru and he was in our office the other day just giving us some advice about promotional stuff so yeah it’s all quite linked and it’s really nice to see those familiar faces you know. It’s not just a group networking thing, it’s a nice kind of warm feeling of recognising some who you’ve been working with before.

RB: Do you have anything else that you’d like to talk about maybe I haven’t asked about or anything you want to expand on?

[33:39 – 35:23 : Attitudes to volunteering]

JL: Erm, I suppose nothing really that I haven’t talked about but just to reiterate that kind of idea of erm volunteering being something that can really add value to your life. It’s something that I find a little bit frustrating when I’m talking to my friends, especially when I was volunteering. Erm, they would kind of dismiss it a bit as and sort of saying well you aren’t getting paid for it you know, almost like what’s the point of it? Which for me is I don’t know I do appreciate people’s time is valuable so perhaps when they’re not working they want to be doing their own thing, spending time with friends and family and that sort of stuff but I would like it If people got away from the idea of always needing monetary compensation for doing things. I know that’s often the way our world works but it’s really nice to be involved in volunteering communities and all the ones I’ve been involved in there’s also been a great vibe in the people you know, there’s a nice interaction between the paid staff and the volunteers and there’s just a nice community feel to it and whether you’re on one side or the other erm it doesn’t need to be something where you’re going in getting paid for it you know you can get lots out of it in other ways. Erm and I think it just, it sounds really cheesy but it makes the world a better place you know because if unless if people only do things when they are getting paid for it, it means there’s a lot less opportunities for these sort of communities to evolve and grow so I think it would be nice if people looked past that a little bit and actually you know gave a shot to doing something different even if it’s not something they would imagine getting something out of initially, you know, just give it a try.

RB: Okay, thank you for your time.

JL: No problem.

RB: And it was lovely to speak to you.

JL: It’s been a pleasure.