Gaming World Forums
General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: Bin on January 18, 2013, 08:14:01 pm
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Hey gang does anybody here do any charity/volunteering stuff?? It's been something I've been interested in for yonks but feel bad as I've done not a great deal of it, and don't do enough now which I'm hoping to change after university if I can!!
Last Summer a small group of us did an art thing/exhibiton for a local arts festival which is pretty small which caters to the general public not just highbrow arty folk.
We basically decided early on we wanted kids to be greatly involved in it as they're much more creatively minded and exciting than adults.
It involved us going to a school to the youngest year groups and got them to draw loads of pics!! We had a bucket of questions that they had to select from likeIF YOU WERE A SUPERHERO WHAT WOULD YOUR POWERS BE?? and they had to draw what they thought. There were a ton of amazing drawings including one which wasa ship/car/house that could fly and was pretty much the size of a warehouse. Sadly I don't have the photos of these drawings as I'm an idiot who forgets to photo stuff. but maybe someone else in the group has some as the drawings in themselves probably warrant a topic of it's own.
After we got the drawings we were given permission to make use of an unused town center shop to do whatever the heck we wanted with it. We thought the best thing we could do was turn the kids drawings into real life things so we made a load of cardboard buildings/stuff and on the festival days let people come inside to look about. It took a day or two to clean out the place as it was in a big mess!! We also had workshops where kids could make drawings or sculptures and add it into the gallery so it continually expanded. It was loads of fun!! Great seeing kids being really shy and nervous when first given a bit of paper and pens but after like 10 minutes they were incredibly talkative and super excited. One kid stayed for 2 hours drawing pictures and making spacerockets!
Every picture the kids made at the school was hung in an area like a gallery space. They were really pumped to see their work up like that!!
(http://imageshack.us/a/img40/8090/room2jy.jpg)
here's the shop unit just after we cleaned it up.
(http://imageshack.us/a/img827/7278/roomf.jpg)
and after with box houses and trees. not pictured is SPACE ROOM which was a massive rocket with loads planets and rockets made by the kids. one of the planets had googly eyes pasted on and was called george i think.
(http://imageshack.us/a/img24/2601/48735438504015487486020.jpg)
The tower was based on a drawing in which the superhero (who was the kid) is shooting laser eyes at a bad guy and killing him. he saved the day.
(http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/6072/91878985.jpg)
this one was pretty special. It was the first house you saw when you walked in to the shop. On the Sunday the girl who's drawing was the basis for this one came in and was really super excited!! Her mother was nearly in tears she was so proud and happy that it was made. That was really touching. They stayed for ages, and after the festival finished they took the house home with them they liked it so much!
It was all pretty crudely done but I think that really helped in the playful aspect of the whole thing. I know that the kids wouldn't have been as excited if we made HYPER REALIST houses and stuff based on their work, they really liked the vibrant colours.
I'd love to do more stuff like this, pop-up galleries/workshops would be a cool thing to carry on, it lets unused buildings get a new lease of life for a while and gets a clean up so it looks nicer for possible buyers, it's pretty environmentally and economically friendly as it's mostly just cardboard/papers and whatever that can get recycled and the kids and the adults seemed to really really enjoy it.
So anyways, anyone else done any cool volunteering stuff or even experience working with kids???
Also discuss how cool kids drawings are thread.
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woah this rules. I don't do any volunteer work because I'm a piece of shit but one time I volunteered at the AFI Silver Docs film festival and Werner Herzog was there to show his film but I never actually saw him nor did I see the film so I got nothin' for ya. Pop-up cities are way cooler anyway
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I've noticed volunteer work is less showing up and helping out but more..
Showing up, interview, bullshit extra tedious effort, second interview, enthusiasm, references then sometimes the background checks, happy face, drug tests then comes the health & safety training, diversity training, the how to deal with people training, the how not to touch a kid training, some more pointless training then doing it all over again only this time in a fucking group training.. and finally the legal shit.. signing your name on the, cant sue us contract, the you die and tough shit contract, appropriate behaviour contract e.i. 'no touchy touchy', the confidentiality contract, your start of volunteering contract, the mid-week contract, the end of week contract and of course the end of contract contract.
Why does the world try so hard to be my enemy?
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this is the coolest thing you can do for children and it's really nice you guys were able to pull it off. like one of the coolest experiences for a child (at least based on my memories and experiences) is to be able to influence the world in some way, beyond your own pencil and paper. seeing something they came up with remade in a larger size must have been amazing for them. really cool that you did this!
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bad experiences...
Aww heck I'm sorry to hear it's been a pretty bad experience for you bud!! It's a shame that there's so much laws and regulations that prohibit so many trivial things and just make it a burden to actually help people. We were lucky and had little problems with getting access to go to the kids classrooms to get them to draw for an hour. The teachers were really kind and helpful! Same goes for the workshops on the site, everyone involved were really supportive of the idea.
One thing that's kind of funny is that as we didn't have anywhere to stay for the week and a bit when we were there, we were sleeping upstairs in a tiny office room of the shop that was damp and freezing due to the building being vacant for over 2 years hahaha. Totally worth it though!
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this looks really cool. were they normal school kids or were they underprivileged in some way? if not, it's still cool but that would be my one suggestion for the future, since kids in eg poor urban environments generally don't have enough exposure to the arts or really any kind of creative outlet, might not be used to people caring what they think etc. kids like that can be mixed in a lot of different places tho. it's great that it shows the 'power' of imagination/creativity
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that's a real beautiful thing you did up there. i don't think i ever would think to do something like that, it is pretty inspiring.
i have been volunteering a little bit lately, but i want to do a lot more. gotta fill that soul, i think. it has been stuff related to homelessness i've been getting involved with, but i am very much a rookie volunteer and don't know the ins and outs of things. i'm thinking of it as a lifelong preoccupation that i have always meant to pick up since i was even in high school, perhaps, so i think i will eventually become someone who is actually useful and who gives out as much as they get from it, but right now i am just enjoying the sense of purpose it gives me.
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I've noticed volunteer work is less showing up and helping out but more..
Showing up, interview, bullshit extra tedious effort, second interview, enthusiasm, references then sometimes the background checks, happy face, drug tests then comes the health & safety training, diversity training, the how to deal with people training, the how not to touch a kid training, some more pointless training then doing it all over again only this time in a fucking group training.. and finally the legal shit.. signing your name on the, cant sue us contract, the you die and tough shit contract, appropriate behaviour contract e.i. 'no touchy touchy', the confidentiality contract, your start of volunteering contract, the mid-week contract, the end of week contract and of course the end of contract contract.
Why does the world try so hard to be my enemy?
I had to go through this shit when I volunteered at a hospital over the summer once when I thought I wanted to do medical school later in life. Turns out the whole time I just organized paper and had to sit through like two 4 hour sessions that were incredibly useless to anything I was doing. I'm sure volunteer work through an organization where you can actually do something worthwhile is much more rewarding, but I have way too many college bills/graduate bills to be paying off to even consider volunteering.
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this is really good. would it be feasible to set up a similar thing through your university department?
big cities in the US tend to have big volunteer organizations through which you can find a bunch of available volunteer opportunities & the organizations that run them
(the one I volunteer through is an affiliate of the Hands On Network, but there've gotta be more; there's also not much paperwork or training to be done, just a one-time group vetting/talk that takes 30 minutes to an hour, probably)
in Philly the affiliate is http://www.philacares.com/ (http://www.philacares.com/), which, contrary to the Google summary, is not a front for Viagra trafficking
basically I just garden and help with big cultural programs, plus occasionally I work at a lending library for inmates that's got a couple rooms in a church basement. mostly things without immediately visible community benefits (kid learning to read, someone having a hot meal, shelter/clothes for homeless people), but the volunteer forces allow these sorts of programs/organizations to function at their current capacity
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That's really cool esiann and Jamie, it's super nice!! I can imagine it's really helping folk, there's a really nice feeling when there's people there to actually show some support or do something just of their own free will and I'm sure everyone who benefits from it are really appreciative.
It'd be cool to set up something for or through the uni but I'm in final year with a dissertation and a heap load of stuff to get done which is kind of stalling me on doing that right now... Kind of bummed out we never tried to do anything before now. But there's a few of us after university who are moving to Glasgow I think and that might be a cool place to carry on trying something like this maybe???
The kids were from different kind of families, it was a small town so there were some well off and some probably doing just ok. But we did go to the special needs class too and they seemed to really enjoy it. One kid was super awesome at drawing dinosaurs there!! But yeah I agree, doing something like this in an area where there's a good deal of poverty/underprivileged would probably be really a worthwhile cause. One thing we did to make sure the kids actually came to the workshop on the days was we gave to the classes PERSONALISED GOLD TICKETS that invited them to the thing. It looked pretty neat and we were thinking if I was a kid and got a gold ticket inviting myself to something that I helped make I'd be pumped.
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I used to be an organizer in my city for an organization that antagonized businesses, bosses/landlords that did sleazy shit like steal deposits or wages
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Nothing is as heartwarming as seeing the broken spirit of a scumbag wage or deposit thief reluctantly pay what they owe after making their life miserable for a month
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that sounds like exactly what i want to be doing right this moment.
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Nothing is as heartwarming as seeing the broken spirit of a scumbag wage or deposit thief reluctantly pay what they owe after making their life miserable for a month
you are a real trooper.
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i managed to switch in to someone's soup kitchen shift on tuesday night. this is basic level volunteering, i want to do disruptive stuff like hassling fuckers too, but it gives me something to look forward to. i enjoy it and it makes me feel like even in the short term i've got little important events i need to keep myself straight for, that it begins to matter if i don't show up to things. my motivations for volunteering at this point are mostly selfish, yeah, but motivations and reasons are different things i think. i'm using the fuel i have to do something that might lead to doing better things.
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i think i'm gonna be doing a bit of volunteering tomorrow-- my church is having a "family fun night" as part of their kids program, and my mom (who works for the church) will be working there. one of the fun things that is available for the kids is a reptile show, because my mom knows a guy who does those. (said guy has three large tortoises and an alligator (among many other reptiles) living in his basement, which is just a huge terrarium.) so they need a couple volunteers who are good with animals who can help out with that, and i think my friend and i are gonna do it. hehe it'll be fun to see kids being cautious yet curious about handling giant snakes and lizards, and then being in awe when they play with them and remain unharmed :P
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oh by the way, followup post, here is me with a 9-foot-long albino Burmese python named Cinderella. i spent about 5 hours hanging out with her, encouraging kids to pet her and learn about snakes, and giving out snake stickers. pic:
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/i.imgur.com/JgBKZ5W.jpeg)
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For a second I thought I was in the pets topic and I was like "wait mkkmypet has a pet snake?"
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cool mkk. nice snake.