You may not know it but this last week has been Volunteering Awareness Week in New Zealand. Here are some facts and figures to consider:

· New Zealand is a leading nation in contribution made by volunteers. A recent study of the New Zealand Non-profit sector estimated that volunteers make up 67 per cent of non-profit workforce equal to 133,799 full time positions, a higher proportion than in any of the other 40 world countries participating in the research project. This represents 6.4 per cent of economically active population.

· Non-profit institutions contributed 2.6 per cent to New Zealand’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004. When volunteer labour is included, non-profit institutions’ contribution to GDP increases from 2.6 percent to 4.9 percent.

· More than one million New Zealanders are actively involved in volunteer work. Statistics NZ estimated that in the year ended March 2004, there were 1,011,600 who volunteered for one or more of 97,000 non-profit organisations. This represented 31 percent of the population aged 12 and over.

· New Zealanders contribute 270 million hours of formal, unpaid work for non-profit organisations annually. The time given has been valued at almost $3.31 billion in the year ended March 2004.

· Volunteers contribute these millions of unpaid hours to human rights, faith communities, health, education, sports and recreation, social services, arts and culture, emergency services, the environment and conservation, animal welfare, and community support and development.

· When reporting on unpaid activities undertaken in the 4 weeks prior to the 2006 NZ Census:

- 460,143 people (14.56%) aged 15 years and over looked after a child who did not live in their household

- 258,708 people (8.13%) aged 15 years and over helped someone who was ill or had a disability, and did not live in their household

- 437,241 people (13.84%) aged 15 years and over were involved in other helping or voluntary work for or through an organisation, group or marae

· Some community and voluntary organisations report shortages of volunteers, but others have waiting lists and have more potential volunteers than they need. The underlying reason for either of these situations is often how the organisation manages its overall volunteer programme from recruitment through orientation and training to support and manage the volunteers. In addition, the issue might be a supply and demand one – volunteering hasn’t declined but demand has gone up, and many people prefer ‘project-type’ volunteering over long-term commitments.

· There is an ongoing research into various aspects of volunteering in New Zealand. An inventory of existing NZ research is available at www.volunteeringnz.org.nz/resources/research.php and www.ocvs.govt.nz/work-programme/volunteering-research.html.

Those statistics make impressive reading. It’s clear the social fabric of the country would be seriously impaired without the contribution of this army of volunteers. So why volunteer?

Why not is the obvious answer. For me though it’s about making a contribution and performing a service to your community. You can think of it as giving back something or simply being grateful for what you have in your life and projecting that gratitude out into the world.

And it’s free. All you give is your time. It keeps your feet on the ground, teaches you humility and opens your eyes to people and situations you may not come across in your daily life. All in all its a fabulous thing to do.

I’ve been a volunteer for a 3 years now and am involved in 3 different organisations. I’ll tell you a bit about them because I simply want to promote them and hope that maybe someone out there will find that it spurs them on to get involved.

I’ve been a Budget Service Advisor for Christchurch Budget Services for a few years now. It’s a debt counselling service focused on helping people understand basic budgeting and how to navigate their way out of the debt trap and take a responsible approach to managing their financial position. i’ve met some interesting people and hopefully helped them on their way to a better position for themselves. Sometimes i’ve felt like a personal counsellor as well as often money issues can reveal personal problems. You don’t have to be an expert in money issues as full training is provided. What i like about it is there is often a very concrete outcome and i love taking financial and lending organisations to task! I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t serious about paying off their debts. But boy I wish i’d been around before they started!!

Nearly a year ago I joined up with PILLARS, an organisation dedicated to improving the lives of children who have parents in prison. They match volunteers with these children for a year’s worth of mentoring in the hope that it will have a positive impact. It really does. It’s a proactive approach to ended the cycle of criminalty and making sure these children are not lost and forgotten by adults when their parents disappear for no fault of the child’s. It’s been anincredible experience getting to know a young boy who has come from a very difficult family situation. The role is to spend 2-6 hours a fortnight with your mentee basically hanging out and doing stuff and be able to commit for a year. We’ve done all sorts over the last year: biking, climbing, mini-golf, walking, playing in the park, reading in the library, wandering around town visiting the various sites. It takes time getting to know a child who is often naturally wary of strangers but the rewards come later. Again all it takes is a bit of your time and a belief that all children deserve a decent crack. It’s a wonderful organisation to be involved in and lots of training is provided with courses throughout the year.

This year I decided to volunteer at Refugee Services and help a family resettle in Christchurch. Each year the UN resettles thousands of refugees in third party countries, where there is no hope of return to one’s homeland and the country they are currently in will not take them permanently. New Zealand takes about 750 a year of these “quota refugees” and helps them settle into their new life. There is a very thorough training program to prepare you for the job ahead. It’s a 6 month commitmnet but usually it’s the first 4 weeks that are full on and then it settles down. You work in teams and all undertake different tasks such as dealing with WINZ (that’s me!), housing, education, health, english language and general hospitality. My team has been helping a Bhutanese family settle in. It’s been a marvellous experience and has really stretched me at times. The families arrive almost as a clean slate and hurriedly must put a new life together. Yet they are so keen, hopeful and desperate to start a normal life, get jobs and contribute. They are immensely grateful for the help New Zealand has provided. As a volunteer it’s a chance to make a real difference and also experience a new culture and have your eyes opened to the lives that some people live through no fault of their own. Globally the refugee community numbers over 11m people……people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and in many cases will never go back.

It makes me feel very humble and very grateful for the comfortable life I have. I think that’s what volunteering really does. It makes you appreciate what you have; it connects you with your fellow man; it teaches you new skills and it takes you out of your comfort zone.

As the proverb states; ” You must give in order to receive”.

So what’s stopping you?

I wanted to share this story about the rehabiltion of child soldiers in Africa. It’s nothing short of a human tragedy and deserves our attention. About 10 years ago I did a course on the International Dimensions of Human Rights. One fact that really troubled me was the sheer numbers of children who had been co-opted by force into becoming soldiers and ultimately killers. The use of drugs and torture was commonplace and the results horrific.

Yet out of this comes a story of healing which has lessons for all of us especially those in developed countries where teenage crime is on the rise. I’ll leave you all to draw your own conclusions.

We are currently enmeshed in a debate about the role of smacking in society here. A piece of legislation currently in Parliament is calling for the abolition of the right for parents to use “reasonable force” on their children. Of course how does one define reasonable force. New Zealand struggles with a culture of violence towards children (adults also) and this legilsation has been seen as a way of saying no to any kind of violence.

http://www.greens.org.nz/campaigns/section59/

Now this has seen some people get pretty steamed up about the government interferring in their “right” to discipline their children as they see fit and the middle classes will be criminalised for just giving occasional smacks which hardly qualify as violence. It’s been quite a ding dong battle with Parliament passing the legislation against general public opinion which has been against it.

I had this letter published today in the Christchurch Press,

Dear Sir,

The response to the proposed Bradford legislation has been quite revealing about attitudes towards children in New Zealand. As John Tamihere eloquently expressed children are mere chattels to be dealt with as any parent sees fit. That used to be the way husbands viewed their wives and judging by the statistics on domestic assault some still do. It is only through legislation that real social changes have been able to take root and become embedded in society.

At first this legislation can seem invasive but as Pita Sharples exhorted it’s about saying no to any kind of violence within our families. There are many non-violent ways to discipline a child. Some don’t give instant results like a sharp smack but in the long run they have better results. We need to listen more to our children and find out why they are behaving inappropriately and then deal with it. Hitting someone and then telling them you love them is a lame excuse for a lazy and angry approach. Big respect to Pita Sharples for making a stand even though he knows it’s the harder road to take.

Yours Sincerely.

So what do people here think? As Pita Sharples said “how can we hit something we love”. But some would say a short sharp smack lets children know when they have stepped over the line (i’m just saying that for balance).

Parenting is damn hard work and parents need way more help and resources to bring up their children. Such irony…one of the easiest and most pleasureable things to create and one of the hardest to look after

I feel that resorting to any kind of violence is simply reinforcing a culture where violence is used as a method of resolving disputes whether at a basic interpersonal level or a geopolitical one.

The attraction is that violence usually gets you an immediate result but the long-term consequences are usually a disaster. So what can we do? What do we need to do to make a non-violent society. I have my own ideas but i would love to hear from others on this subject.

Peace and love to all.

Sustainability – what is it?

Sustainability is a much maligned word “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Well that’s a tad harsh but the word has been dragged through the mud from the early days of “sustainable development” to the “four pillars” namely enviornment, economy, social and cultural.

Reductionism rules!

You could argue that we have a sustainable society already because we are still here…6 billion of us. That’s not a bad effort considering we started off with just two .

But when we look back at our history we see clearly the duality of our existence: misery, bloodshed, violence and despicable acts; and amazing creation, beauty, love and art. It;s hard to argue that much has changed in the last 10,000 years at least.

So where to? Can we ever become whole or will we always be engaged in a battle between the dark and light forces in our amazing universe.

I believe sustainability as a metaframework not an end in itself. It allows us to ask ourselves “what kind of society do we wish to live in?’…..if we can define that then all the other stuff will follow. The problem we have know is we start with the reduced view whether it is the environment or social issues or economic growth.

Then when it all ends in conflict we wonder why.

So where do start? Well there’s the ten commandments magna carta, uk bill of rights moving along to more modern frameworks such as the US constitution and one i quite like is the UN Declaration of Human Rights which came into being on 10 December 1948.

This was ratified by all then 58 member states which was no mean feat. The committee which prepared the initial text was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt herself. You can view it here

Article 25 and 26 are of particular interest being on the issue of education and well being.

It’s well worth a read.

Article 1, Section 8 of the US consitution notes:

Congress has the power “to coin money, regulate the value thereof”……….it doesnt say banks have that power mind you.

Coming back the the topic at hand: how do we craft a society that sustains itself without the externalisation of environmental, social, cultural and economic costs.

- Eliminating poverty (Article 25 of the UNDHR).
- Compulsory free education to 16 for all (Article 26 of the UNDHR).
- Life, Liberty and Security of Person (Article 3 of the UNDHR)
- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (US Declaration of Independence)

I could go on.

What is it that we want? We dont want our prisons overflowing with societal detritus. We therefore must ensure at all costs all children we bring into this world are well looked after with resources to ensure that is the case. Decent fresh food not the fossil fuel sugar laden processed rubbish churned out my the corporatised supermarkets. No wonder so many children are going round the bend…we’re poisoning them.

Safe, secure and healthy homes are vital for our children. Well resourced educational facilities are next on the list alongside decent parks and safe public spaces. Ripping poverty and its bedfellows out of our society has to start now with major expenditure….the kind normally reserved for invading other nations and killing machines.

If anyone argues “show me the money”…well it’s right there in front of you. There always has been and continues to be a huge transfer of wealth from the state to the private financial sector. It’s fact: in the UK the sum has been estimated at GBP20-40bln a year. In the US i imagine it will be a more significant sum.

Underlying all this is the question of who owns the money supply, where does the power lie.

If we dont have an idea of what we’re aiming for we will most certainly miss the target. We know we already have as levels of happiness and well being have been static for decades (sorry GDP is not going to help).

If we focus on building strong roots then sustainability will come. Right now no amount of fiddling will help. As the Declaration of Independence noted,

“whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter it or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness”.

There have been some interesting stories out in the last week which have made me realise we need to change our focus a little. The Unicef report showed children in New Zealand getting a raw deal, suffering violent and deprived lives. This is a ridiculous state of affairs especially in a country with strong growth over the last 10 years and 9 years of a Labour government. The report is available here

At the same time there has been a great deal of fuss over the ethical dimensions of the NZ Cullen Fund, which pours $2bln a year of taxpayers money into the investment market to help pay for some of the increasing pension liabilities. The fund is already some $12bln in size. See below for more details

http://www.nzsuperfund.co.nz/

This is great long term investment but wait a second…..why don’t we start investing some of that money in our children. The payoff will be way bigger than the global stock markets which are prone to wild swings in an era of abundant credit. Here is a letter i wrote to the local paper

Dear Sir,

Events of the last week have shown New Zealand to be a society under severe pressure. The complete failure of the supposedly free state education system to lead young people out into the world as individuals able to make a contribution to society reflects poorly on the current Labour administration. Many parents already under financial pressure are required to increase contributions to school costs which have serious impact on the home budget. As a society we should be proud that we strive to offer education free to all our children knowing full well that investing in the future of our children is the best investment we can make. If we continue to fail in this we will pay a heavy price in the future and one which will dwarf the cost now of reducing class sizes, boosting teacher numbers, training and pay, and providing quality pre-school care to all our under fives. And yes investing in post-natal parenting classes would certainly help. No wonder many of your columnists are simply in a state of sad resignation. To see the government invest $2bln a year in the Cullen Fund to meet some future demand from an ageing population when that money should be spent now on our children is enough to drive anyone to despair. If the government does not deal with this situation right now it may as well start preparing for a vastly increased prison population and a country in social and economic disarray.

$2bln a year into better schools and better housing for children? free schooling as it should be….we are going to need all the skilled workers we can get in the future so we better start focusing in that now.

The Cullen Fund has always been a project based on ego and trying to keep up with the Aussies and their $1trln fund. All that does is drive asset prices to unrealistic levels and we know what eventually happens there.

Like charity, investment should start at home..