Why VolREACH? Outlining an audacious vision
The second entry in a series of reflections that showcase the importance of VolREACH, CEO Thu-Trang Tran outlines how VolREACH will promote active inclusion. Revisit part one of our VolREACH series here.
VolREACH is about changing the status quo. VolREACH is about setting up a platform for the communities of the West to broker the networks of power and knowledge, and to marshal resources to the West and into the volunteering cohorts. Those resources would be invested in changing up traditional approaches to volunteering that can be inadvertently exclusionary. Volunteering practices need to be actively inclusive. It is about elevating the latent potential of community volunteering.
To this day, I am grateful that I was able to experience active inclusion in my formative years, paving the way to explore my potential.
VolREACH starts with one step on a pathway.
That is collaboration.
The next step is collective action and impact.
Then, a movement.
Finally, a tipping point to change the system.
How will VolREACH marshal resources to the West to advance volunteering practices and policies?
First, VolREACH seeks to change the system in the very way it works, taking an ’enablement’ approach as advocated by the Centre for Public Impact:
Respecting the agency and potential of its communities and stakeholders.
Sharing power, networks, and knowledge.
A drive towards person-centred volunteering practices that builds communities.
Reducing visible and invisible barriers.
This means reimagining volunteering beyond the narrow traditional lens of volunteering as an exchange of time and effort in a role, often serving as a shadow ‘cheap’ workforce.
For all the benefits volunteering brings, the support infrastructure for volunteerism is desperately lacking investment. Our region receives 13 cents per capita to provide volunteering support services, well below the 25 cents national average.
Volunteering is really the safety net of community and public services. More than half of the 56,000 registered charity organisations in Australia are wholly volunteer operated. But this safety net needs an urgent upgrade. Volunteering isn’t free. And recent studies report that volunteering is collapsing (see the ANU report and Our Community report).
The structural complexities of community volunteering need to be better understood (youth volunteering barriers and gendered volunteering for example). The latent potential of ‘informal’ volunteering - often by multicultural communities - needs to be supported to stem the long-term decline and stasis of volunteerism and practices.
VolREACH seeks to bridge the gaps of knowledge, practice, and policy gaps that are instrumental to transformation of practice. This means deliberately designing action-research around community-led projects to advance both practice and policy. Research insights and policy ideas don’t easily translate to action, and grassroot innovation in communities needs privileged representations to make their way into policies and grant-making.
“VolREACH can tangibly serve as a ready made vehicle that is robust enough to secure resources for community-led projects centred on meaningful volunteering.”
Doing so also allows for practice-based evidence, advocacy, and advice to decision-makers and donors about volunteering as a public good to redress urgent problems of wellbeing, unemployment, and social isolation. VolREACH seeks to establish the virtuous iterative circle of ideas into action, action into new ideas and norms.
We can look at Meals On Wheels programs as an example. The meals were initially the primary focus of the initiative, and volunteering was a mere means of delivery. We’ve come to appreciate that the act of volunteering brings about tremendous social outcomes in and of itself, arguably more so than the meals.
Yet volunteering still fails to attract the attention and resourcing it deserves, and its manifold impacts yet to be fully accounted. Also, it is far easier to ask for support for resourcing meals than it is to ask for mobilising resources to support someone starting their journey as a volunteer - improving their own wellbeing to have a sense of identify and purpose, and in turn benefit the community.
VolREACH can tangibly serve as a ready made vehicle that is robust enough to secure resources for community-led projects centred on meaningful volunteering. There is a growing trend in government, academic and philanthropy towards funding selected consortia, rather than many smaller organisations for efficient contract management as much as for incentivising collaboration.
The vision for VolREACH is pragmatic. Properly resourced to be a viable platform, VolREACH can:
Provide more resources to people and communities in the West .
Raise the profile and importance of the volunteering sector
Advance volunteering practice, towards person-centred, systems-change model for enduring impact
Innovate data-informed evaluation, research, and policy insights to measure what counts for volunteers and communities.
Active inclusion during my schooling opened doors into the world of science. Though I eventually took a path that led to studying law, I still carry with me to this day the practice of curiosity and experimentation even as I came to understand the functions of power, social justice, and social change.
With that potent combination of curiosity and drive for social change, it is my hope VolREACH will bring to fore debate and conversations about the value of community-led action-research, and the enablement approach of sharing power, cross-sector collaboration, and active inclusion.