I know now, after working in the ‘third’ sector for over four years, that if I finished paid work then I’d do something for nothing. In some ways, I’d like to do nothing and escape ‘work’ forever, but having seen the real world at close hand, I couldn’t walk away and do nothing.
If I had any form of hands-on skill, I’d travel the land doing stuff for DIY SOS. It’s one of the few programmes I watch on the telly and it always moves me. Good people doing good things to help people who need the kind of help society can’t, or rather won’t, offer. However, I have no practical skills at all, nothing to offer Nick Knowles and his team. If I got involved with a DIY SOS project, I’d probably be responsible for killing someone, not helping someone. But there is still plenty I can do.
I am weary of reading things on social networks where people express their anger about, for example, homeless ex service personnel. In fact, I was so weary last year, I invited my social network friends to contact me and I would put them in touch with a specific homeless charity in Bristol. How many of those whose hearts were breaking contacted me to get involved? That would be a big fat zero. Don’t waste my time by complaining about other people not doing enough when you’re not doing anything, thank you very much. Turning up to hear The Last Post on Remembrance Day is honourable enough. Not helping to put bread on the table of desperate ex soldiers is quite another. If you really care.
In principle, I dislike the very idea of charities having to do things for which I believe the state should fund. Governments send men and women to war and men and women get injured and killed in wars. The charities, and not the state, pick up the tab. And the reason why is simple: society does not believe the state should care for ex service personnel. If it did, the state would provide. Society is happy with the status quo and only complains when extreme situations, of which there are many, come to light.
The same applies to so many other people. Those with brain injury, the lonely and isolated, the victims of crime – there are huge numbers of people whose lives might not be worth living but for volunteers.
I have learned so much from working in the third sector and I have unearthed skills I never knew I had. I am never going to get rich helping other people but that was never the point.
Our country is about to elect a hardline Conservative government which will divide our broken country even more. You ain’t seen nothing yet. I can’t do much to prevent the damage being done but I can be there to help put back together the wreckage. “Something must be done” is a sentence that really should end with the words “by someone else”. Why not just do something?
