Developing a volunteer program with cultural diversity in mind
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Carlene Lamanna from Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre (MRC) gives advice on developing a volunteer program and talks about their latest recruitment drive which placed a number of volunteers from migrant or refugee backgrounds.
The video was produced by Spectrum as part of the 'From receivers to givers' project. The project focused on engaging culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) volunteers in the workplace.
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Transcript
Carlene Lamanna
Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre
Over 18 months, we recruited around 25 volunteers, all of which – around 70-80 per cent of which – were from a migrant or refugee background and we recruited those volunteers into various roles across the agency.
Really diverse roles, anything from IT to case work support, administrative support, as well, with our Business and Support Services Unit, also giving some people experience in accounting, and we found it really quite easy to find and match the positions we were looking for with qualified and motivated volunteers.
Developing a volunteer program
I think the first and most important point to consider when starting a volunteer program is making sure it is appropriately resourced, so you have somebody who can be responsible for every stage along the way within the volunteer program.
So that's to do with getting staff buy in, so getting staff from the agency on board or the organisation on board to say, 'This is why migrant and refugee volunteers are such a value add to the agency!'
I think this was a very important initial phase for us to go through, talking to staff and saying, 'This is what volunteers can bring to your everyday role and your program are or you project areas' so the first step was getting organisational buy in.
The second step was around developing position descriptions with individual staff members to make sure, I guess, staff were clear about what the detail of the role would involve, so that volunteers when they were applying knew know what was expected of them.
So it was very clear, three or four dot points, these are the types of tasks you will be doing daily, these are the types of skills we are looking for in an individual – we're not expecting you to be amazingly qualified, but just to have a motivation.
First and foremost, the most important criteria for volunteers when we were recruiting, was that there was an enthusiasm and motivation for wanting to get some Australian workplace experience. So with that 70-80 per cent CALD volunteers in the agency that was a big motivation for volunteering – to gain some Australian workplace experience.
Sharing resources
This stuff has been done before, so – volunteer programs are notoriously under-resourced – not to put an extra burden on yourself from developing those policies and procedures from scratch, but talking to other agencies.
I think in the community sector, we're more than happy to share those resources and those skills and those tips about what didn't work in the past, or things should I look out for, or what traps shouldn't I fall into when managing a volunteer program.
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