There is one super easy way to be happier, more fulfilled, connect with community, and to get off socials – volunteer. Volunteering is this incredible two-way street. You give back to your community, and in return you feel good about yourself. It’s better than 100 likes on a Facebook post! Actual real likes from people with actual faces!
On the weekend I went down to New Brighton and helped a few very committed, community-minded locals remove fencing posts and wire from the beach. My role was very minor, I just carried stuff. Sometimes that’s all you need to do. In chatting to one of the locals I discovered that he’d lived there for 50 years – he’d moved here back in the day when you still could. Because it was cheap. For 30 years he’d been a member of Dune Care, until the organiser left and there wasn’t anyone to perform that admin role so the group disbanded. But they still cared for their beach. He laughed and said, ‘there’s just old blokes in it now, like me.’ All around the country, organisations are struggling to find volunteers. They are on the decline.
I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. Without long-term, genuinely affordable and secure housing, we don’t have volunteers. If people don’t know how long they are going to be somewhere they are less likely to volunteer. If they’re on holidays in an Airbnb they’re definitely not, you’re lucky if they put the bin out. So in a very community-minded way, secure housing helps us all. Even the superaffluent who’ve never dug a hole in their entire lives. Except maybe to hide some cash.
Volunteers are the heartbeat of our villages. In the recent flood crisis they made food for evacuation centres, they turned up to help people in danger make their way to safety. Volunteers run our kids’ sporting clubs, they cut up the oranges, they organise washing the shirts, they plant trees, they care for wildlife, they fight fires, they visit the elderly, they raise money for the less fortunate, they bake cakes for fundraisers, they rescue people caught in a rip. Volunteers feed the homeless. They sit with people in distress. Volunteers welcome you to the theatre and show you to your seat.
Our volunteers are ageing. I’ve been doing a few shifts in homeless kitchens and in various other frontline organisations and I am often the youngest there. I’m 57. It’s clear for the health of our community we need younger people to step up. At one homelessness outreach in Tweed I was working alongside a woman who was nearly 80. While I celebrate the awesome community spirit of our older community, I’d invite younger people to get involved too. Find an organisation that you feel resonates with your core values and your skillset and even if you feel like you don’t have the time, maybe just get involved and you’ll find a way to be useful. You’ll never regret it. And you meet some awesome older people.
A few years back I joined the CWA. With its 100-plus year history of supporting the welfare of women and children, it felt like the right place for me to go. I remember my first meeting. I felt nervous. I am an average cook and my handicraft expertise is nil. Would I be kicked out? The president noted how good it was to see younger members. I looked behind me. ‘No that’s you Mandy’. I blushed. I love the CWA. I am blown-away by their sense of service, and the incredible work they do. It’s inspirational. Maybe one day I’ll even learn how to knit.
Volunteering reminds you, that in a world that sometimes feels narcissistic and self-centred, that people are good. That together we make a difference. So please, our forests, our beaches, our vulnerable, our kids, our elderly and our broader community need you. Sometimes when you save others you actually save yourself.
- Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox column has appeared in The Echo for almost 23 years. The personal and the political often meet here; she’s also been the Greens federal candidate since before the last federal election. The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
