I hear a lot of consultants and organizations that promote volunteerism and volunteer engagement say that you absolutely should put volunteering experience on your résumé, period. But consider this: a 2007 study found that a job applicant that noted she was a “PTA coordinator” on her resume – a volunteer – was 79% less likely to be recommended for hire compared to an equally qualified woman without children. I found this statistic via “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?,” Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Bernard, and In Paik, in the American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 5 (2007): 1297-1339.
Someone who has been a coordinator of a parent-teacher association very likely:
Knows how to manage large amounts of email.
Has experience managing a team online and onsite, including identifying tasks, delegating tasks, managing various individual team members, accommodating different learning and work styles, etc.
Has a great deal of experience in conflict management and customer service.
Knows how to juggle priorities.
Knows how to negotiate.
Probably has a lot of event management experience.
And if they did this during the pandemic, knows how to coordinate online meetings.
Yet, all some employers will see is: she has kids and she makes her kids a priority and that might mean she’s distracted on the job or absent. And I bet it’s not the same for a man who puts this on his CV – I bet for him, it’s: wow, what a caring multi-tasker!
Then there’s my own experience: some of my best marketing and public relations experience has been as a volunteer. I have had some substantial accomplishments regarding my outreach activities for a couple of nonprofits in particular. I list these experiences right alongside my paid work – why shouldn’t I? It’s exactly the same work, but some roles were paid, others weren’t. I had one interview become shocked and even outraged when, during our interview, she realized I had treated these unpaid roles with the same importance as unpaid roles, and said, “Wait, these just volunteer roles?” Needless to say, I didn’t get that job. By contrast, in interviewing for my very first job with the United Nations, one of the things the interview panel was particularly impressed with was my volunteering regarding marketing and public relations for the California Abortion Rights Action League – they liked the work experience AND they liked that I had done it as a community volunteer. That volunteering role was crucial to me getting that first UN job, no question.
For the most part, I do believe in sharing volunteering experience on your résumé if such demonstrates skills you think make you, potentially, a more attractive candidate for employment. Experience working with communities different from your own, or experience leading a team, or volunteering that’s given you training to handle stressful or emergency situations are all things that will get a potential employer’s attention. When I’m a hiring manager, I give as much weight to such volunteering as I give to paid work – I don’t care if you got paid to be in a leadership position as much as your having been in that leadership position.
But volunteering experience can also show your age – like volunteering activities with a group dominated by or exclusively for people over 55. I say this as someone both in her 50s and who has heard it from co-workers for decades: people over 45, especially in the USA, are discriminated against for employment because of their age. Be careful in showing it.
If you are a woman, you have to think carefully about what volunteering you share and how you frame it when looking for paid work. I, personally, would see being a Girl Scout leader as a HUGE plus, knowing just how much financial management, conflict resolution, excellent communications skills and customer service is required in dealing with both the girls and their parents. Others might see it as, “Oh, she’s a mom, her kids are going to interfere with her job.” I’m not at all saying not to put it on your résumé, but think carefully how to frame it – show how it makes you a more attractive candidate.
Always note in a role you undertook as a volunteer if it was, in whole or in part, virtual volunteering – where you did some or all of your service online. Note what you did and what you accomplished and, absolutely, use that phrase: virtual volunteering. I have heard it over and over from various folks: in a job interview, at some point, someone on the interview panel says, “Tell me more about this virtual volunteering stuff.” They use that exact phrase, virtual volunteering, when speaking to candidates, and are intrigued by it. It got the employer’s attention, and it made them have a closer look at that candidate’s professional qualifications. Also note what software tools you used as a part of that virtual volunteering role – being a Zoom video conference aficionado will get you far these days!
Have you ever gotten an interview in part because of your volunteering experience? Do you think you have been passed over as a candidate because of a volunteering experience you listed on your application? Do you completely disagree with this blog? Share your thoughts below.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
I save my political advocacy for other online avenues, for the most part. But as a humanitarian aid professional, I have an obligation to those I have worked with and for, to be ethical in my interactions with them and on their behalf and to be at least somewhat informed on their most pressing challenges. And my continued focus on Afghanistan, particularly regarding the people who are now in profound danger from the Taliban, comes from that belief in that obligation.
I have written my US federal representatives twice already, and even had a phone call with a staff member for one. Here’s what I wrote to Senator Merkley, Senator Wyden and Representative Bonamici today:
Afghans protected me when I worked in Afghanistan in 2007. Afghans, especially women and including my Afghan colleagues, pursued education, work and social endeavors specifically because the USA said it should. And all of those activities that were encouraged by me and so many others from the USA have now put them in grave danger. The actions of the USA have put Afghan women, Hazara Afghans, LGBTQ Afghans, religious minorities in Afghanistan, journalists and many others in grave danger.
Senator Merkeley (or Senator Wyden or Representative Bonamici), waiting for State Department approval has been a MAJOR stumbling block. You are needed to pressure the State Department to better explain to volunteer evacuee groups why manifests are being denied and flights canceled. Better yet, the State Department should adopt a default policy of non-objection: that is, people should be allowed to fly unless a national-security problem pops up during pre-flight vetting, in which case the individual or individuals should be removed and the flight allowed to proceed.
Also, high-risk evacuees cannot leave Afghanistan unless there is space at a “lily pad”—one of several locations outside of the United States where refugees can wait in safety for visa processing to the United States, such as the al-Udied base in Qatar. Expanding capacity may require the United States to offer carrots to regional partners to offset any costs and risk they accept. You can help pressure the powers that be to make this happen.
When high-risk people are waiting for visas, they are a drain on resources that could otherwise be put toward getting more people out. Congress should pass an Afghan Adjustment Act to allow evacuees to adjust their status to apply for long-term permanent residence.
The U.S. government needs to better support, not inhibit, evacuation efforts. Public statements must be matched with quieter efforts to expand multi-organization evacuation efforts such as the #AfghanEvac coalition, identify and work to mitigate common challenges and accelerate the overall evacuation process.
• Please pressure the powers that be to use humanitarian parole funds to hire staff and fund flights. Humanitarian parole applications that allow refugees to enter the United States in an emergency requires a $575 fee. Project ANAR, an advocacy and resource network for Afghan refugees, claims to have filed 20,000-plus applications alone, resulting in more than $11.5 million in fees. These funds should be redirected to hire temporary staff, federal or contract as appropriate, to accelerate visa processing. The fees should also be used to fund additional flights to evacuate high-risk people.
• Volunteer efforts largely drive the effort to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. We volunteers also have other commitments to friends, job, and simple life. The effort cannot be sustained indefinitely. The United States should develop plans for what happens if those efforts diminish, or even disappear.
The USA has a responsibility to support those put in death’s path to defend it. Let’s get moving.
Did you discover last month that your nonprofit, NGO, government program or other cause-based, mission-based initiative is overly reliant on Facebook?
Sara Soueidan is a front-end user interface (UI) and design systems engineer / speaker / trainer and she tweets about usability and accessibility. On October 4th, when Facebook went down for several hours, she tweeted this:
While we’re at it: if you don’t have a Web site of your own and you’ve been blogging and creating content on third-party platforms, now might be a good time to reconsider creating one and owning your own little corner of the internet.
I completely agree. I am horrified at how many nonprofits, NGOs, government programs and other cause-based organizations have pretty much abandoned their own web sites and post only to Facebook.
Facebook is a for-profit company. If Facebook goes away tomorrow, there goes all of your data. By contrast, the address of your web site is yours, and if your web host were to go away, no problem – you move your site to a new host. Your address doesn’t have to ever change. You can move your web site to a different host is you decide you don’t like the host’s customer service or prices, or if the host goes out of business.
Facebook terms of service strongly imply that whatever you post there, Facebook owns, and that Facebook has the right to sell or give what you post to Facebook, even in your account profile, that you have marked as “private”, to anyone it wants to. By contrast, a web site is yours. The content and the address are yours.
Facebook content is only for Facebook users. If someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, they cannot see most of what is on Facebook. By contrast, a web site is public and anyone with Internet access can see it.
Your web site is your primary home on the Internet. Everything you do online, including on social media, should ultimately link back to your web site. Yes, you can use the Facebook events feature to announce events, but that event information should be on your web site as well. And remember that many of your clients, volunteers, donors and others use different social media channels. Have you asked them not only if they are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever the flavor of the month is, but also if they would want to interact with your program on these.
Your blog should be on your own web site as well. I use WordPress, which is free, but I use my own web site to host it. Twice, my blog host has gone under, and in both cases, neither was captured on archive.org. Luckily, one did give me enough of notice for me to download all of my blogs, so I could repurpose many of them here.
I even screen capture Twitter or Facebook interactions that are particularly memorable or worth bragging about, and upload them to Flicker and maintain a database of such, and all of my photos, on a hard drive.
Yes, there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook. Or Twitter. Or even only via email. None of those audiences are more important than another for your nonprofit, NGO, etc. Make sure all of your clients, volunteers, donors and others are reminded regularly of all of your various online communications channels – and your web address!
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Last week, I blogged about the controversy at the Art Institute of Chicago per their dismissing their entire volunteer docent membership and their plans to replace the volunteers with paid staff, in pursuit of a more diverse corps of museum guides to interact with the public.
GirlGuiding in the United Kingdom, the UK’s version of the Girl Scouts, has also incurred the wrath of many for one of its efforts at volunteer inclusion: on October 28th, the organization sent out a tweet that ended with, a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.
More than 2000 people liked the tweet. But the tweets-of-outrage were swift and many: the complaints focused on a belief that GirlGuiding was sexualising children with such messaging. One response that was representative of most of the negative responses: Why do your guides need to know whether your volunteers have a presence or absence of sexual desire? A nonprofit in the UK, Safe Schools Alliance UK, which has worked against allowing children to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify and works against bans on gay conversion therapy, is pushing back hard against the GirlGuide messaging. This group promotes its agenda as part of responsible safeguarding, the term used in the UK and Ireland regarding measures to protect the health, well-being and human rights of individuals, especially children and vulnerable adults, better ensuring they live free from abuse, harm and neglect.
I offer this info on this controversy for two reasons:
Creating and launching efforts in support of the diversity of volunteers your organization has, or wants, and in support of accommodation of that diversity, will always attract complaints, immediately or eventually. There may be just a few, there may be many. Some of the complaints will be sincere and from individuals not a part of any “movement” or organization, and some of the complaints will be from volunteers and paid staff of very well-organized groups. Either way, your organization needs to have thought about how to answer questions and comments like why are you doing this and why is this necessary and this puts young people in danger.
People asking the question or making the comment aren’t all obtuse or rigid. Don’t assume everyone complaining is so when you craft replies. Provide a response that comes from the point of view of this person just needs more and better information in order to support this statement or decision. Will such a response convince everyone? No. But your reply is being seen by people who aren’t entirely sure how they feel about the situation. Perceived arrogance on your part can drive those people who are on the fence into the arms of people and organizations who are only too happy to provide carefully word-smithed, detailed responses to frame their point of view.
My perspective: I adore GirlGuides and Girl Scouts of the USA. I deeply admire the commitment of both to ensuring all girls feel they can be a part of their activities. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something that’s lead to controversy. But no one – NO ONE – can say the GirlGuides and Girl Scouts don’t put safeguarding at the top of their list of priorities.
I also know that change can be painful – not just for others, but also for me. Work regarding inclusion and diversity is not easy, because many societal norms are deeply held, and cherished beliefs are challenged by conversations around inclusion and diversity – and that’s uncomfortable. It’s easy for a person to feel attacked during such conversations. I’ve seen diversity and inclusion experts be angered at the idea that they need for their own web sites to meet accessibility standards so that people with disabilities and using assistive technologies can access their online information – in their talks about inclusion, they were focused on ethnic and cultural groups, not people with disabilities, and the realization is embarrassing and painful.
I assure you that, eventually, even if you consider yourself an advocate for inclusion and diversity, you will have a moment where your own deeply held principles are challenged, and you will feel anger and you will be incredulous. Maybe you will decide to hold on to those principles – I’m not here to say you should or shouldn’t. But remember that feeling the next time you are facing it from someone else.
And I love how the corporate world, which always has oh-so-much to say about how nonprofits should operate, are oh-so-silent during these conversations as well.
The entire membership of the Art Institute of Chicago docent program, all volunteers, are being let go by the museum in an effort to entirely revamp how art education for museum visitors is staffed and to make such staffing much more diverse.
It is a move that has hurt long-time volunteers and outraged right-wing media, but many say it’s the only way to dismantle a system that, intentionally or not, is designed to exclude many people from participating.
On Sept. 3, Veronica Stein, the AIC’s executive director of learning and public engagement, emailed 82 active docents, telling them the program’s current iteration would be coming to an end. Stein told the Wall Street Journal that the museum must move “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility.” In the letter, Stein said the museum “had a responsibility to rebuild the volunteer educator program in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.” The AIC told USA TODAY that the pause is part of a “multi-year transition” to a “hybrid model that incorporates paid and volunteer educators.”
“Rather than refresh our current program, systems, and processes, we feel that now is the time to rebuild our program from the ground up,” Stein said in the letter, noting that current docents would be invited to apply for the paid positions.
While the elimination of docents struck many as sudden, it had actually been in the works for years, according to artnet news: the AIC stopped training new docents in 2012, and has been discussing internally how to restructure the program since 2019.
The institute’s docent council sent a letter Sept. 13 protesting the pause of the program. The letter described the docents’ expertise, noting that volunteers had trained twice a week for 18 months, done five years of research and writing, and participated in monthly and biweekly trainings. “For more than 60 years, volunteer docents enthusiastically have devoted countless hours and personal resources to facilitate audience engagement in knowledgeable, relevant, and sensitive ways,” the letter said.
Gigi Vaffis, president of the AIC’s docent council, told USA TODAY that she and other docents felt blindsided by the decision and weren’t included in the decision-making. Even now, she said there are few details about what the AIC’s multi-year plan will look like.
Docent programs have long been mainstays of major museums. Docents are all volunteers and are beloved by museum visitors. Becoming a docent can be quite competitive: not everyone who applies is accepted, and docents that get into the program stay for years, even decades. And involving volunteers is a sign a nonprofit wants the community to be a part of the organization – not just as donors or clients but also as people delivering services. But docent ranks at museums are often skewed toward a certain demographic: wealthy white women. The intention of the Chicago Institute is to dismantle this traditionally very rigid system that, intentionally or not, is designed to include/favor one, very privileged group and to exclude others.
Museum equity consultants have long advocated for transitioning volunteer positions at museums to paid roles, to encourage more diversity, allowing people who could never afford to give the time current docents give without pay. Monica Williams, executive producer of The Equity Project, a Colorado-based equity, inclusion and diversity consulting firm, who is NOT involved with the Art Institute, said this shift will open the doors for people who cannot afford to work on weekdays or do a significant amount of unpaid work. If docent programs switch to paid positions, she said it will help museums move away from “a particular demographic of mostly white and wealthy.”
Mike Murawski, a museum consultant and author of “Museums as Agents of Change,” said in the USA Today article that there has long been a tension between equity efforts and volunteer programs. When the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum ended its docent program in 2014 in favor of an initiative for younger volunteers who often work for college credit, Murawski said there was an uproar with many saying the museum might as well close. But now, he said. “they’re doing just fine.” Murawski is one of many museum consultants that says the way forward is not about making changes to programs, but to completely dismantle them and start over, and that docent programs often have “long-standing legacies of how things are supposed to be” that can make them difficult to adapt.
A side note: the Chicago Tribune, a once-great newspaper which was recently bought by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that gutted the staff at the newspaper, wrote an outrageous editorial that had this jaw-dropping and completely misleading statement:
Volunteers are out of fashion in progressive circles, where they tend to be dismissed as rich white people with time on their hands, outmoded ways of thinking and walking impediments to equity and inclusion. Meaningful change, it is often said, now demands they be replaced with paid employees.
This is just flatly not true and the Tribune should be ashamed of itself.
As for me and my opinion: I don’t think programs should always be overly-cautious and ever-fearful of upsetting current, long-term volunteers – quite frankly, I think some long-term volunteers can have an entitled attitude that can discourage, even kill, much-needed changes and innovations. But I also feel like there was a better way to handle this transition. Absolutely, there are MANY systems related to nonprofits, including volunteer engagement, that have been exclusionary. But couldn’t current volunteers, who have invested a great deal of time in their roles, have been involved in the decision-making process, and perhaps, even bought into it? Also, will there still be a way for people to volunteer for the Art Institute – will there still be a community engagement component that isn’t donating funds or attending events?
If you have an example of a museum that significantly revamped its volunteering program so that it was vastly more diverse, but without having to fire the entire volunteer corps, please note such in the comments. Also note if it continued to have a volunteer program of some kind.
With all that said – what do you think?
October 17 update: the Art Institute of Chicago is, apparently, STILL not involving volunteers at all. Below is a screen capture from its volunteer page that notes “the volunteer program is temporarily on pause, and we are not accepting applications at this time.”
Despite virtual volunteering being a widespread practice long before the COVID-19 global pandemic, undertaken by thousands of nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, community groups and more all over the world for more than three decades, a lot of new virtual volunteering “experts” have recently emerged, touting guidelines for setting up a virtual volunteering program, often one specifically for corporate employees to be a part of as a part of their employer’s corporate social responsibility / philanthropic efforts.
I welcome more research regarding virtual volunteering and more stories and presentations from practitioners – people actually engaged in volunteering online or in supporting online volunteers – like this outstanding webinar from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which featured representatives from five of the most popular virtual volunteering schemes in the world. But the recommendations being pushed by a lot of new “experts” recently is steering programs in directions that are going to result in frustration and, potentially, failure.
Here’s five common mistakes I’m seeing in promoting or setting up virtual volunteering recently:
That virtual volunteering new. No, it’s not new. And the consequence of approaching it as new is that new programs ignore the lessons learned and end up making easily-avoidable and program-killing mistakes. They end up causing more frustration than positive results.
That the first step is to set up some kind of platform for matching or collaboration. This is, in fact, one of the last steps, if it’s needed at all. There are a myriad of things to do first, like working with the nonprofits and other programs expected to create tasks and roles for volunteers to ensure this will actually be worth their while, gathering data to show this volunteer engagement is needed, identifying a robust number of tasks and roles volunteers can choose from, creating a process to support volunteers, address their concerns quickly, etc., and measurements for success. This is a lesson I’ve learned over and over and talk about in detail regarding revamping NetAid, which became the UN’s Online Volunteering service.
That safety is automatically built into virtual volunteering. It’s true that virtual volunteering prevents the transmission of the novel coronavirus, but it absolutely still has risks: children and vulnerable populations need to be protected from predatory or exploitative behavior, participants shouldn’t be set up for failure or an unreasonable amount of stress or anxiety, participants should be vetted so they take their roles seriously and don’t end up disappointing the people who were supposed to benefit from the program, etc. Here’s more about safety in virtual volunteering.
That creating worthwhile micro-tasks for volunteers is easy – or that it’s the most desirable virtual volunteering. Creating worthwhile micro-tasks for volunteers is very difficult, and often, what volunteers want is to engage in a meaningful role with a high-degree of responsibility, one that will make a big impact on “the cause.”
And if you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
When I worked at the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme from 2001 to mid-February 2005, one of my duties was directing the Online Volunteering service, the platform that UNV had co-created with NetAid for nonprofits serving the developing world to recruit and engage online volunteers. Near the end of my time at UNV, the new communications manager would not support any of the wildly successful online volunteering program’s communications needs: she would not include information in the quarterly UNV newsletter, she would not pitch stories to the press related to online volunteers and she would not include promoting of the online volunteering platform in any of her strategies. We had a meeting for our entire departments’ staff so I could ask why, and her reply was, “I was hired to promote UNV, not the online volunteering program.” My response: “Gee, UNV is my employer, so I assume the online volunteering program was a part of UNV.” The meeting went downhill from there.
Even before she joined UNV, it was a constant struggle to get UNV staff, both at HQ and in the field, to think about online volunteers as a part of UNV’s mission, despite the full support of the then head of UNV, Sharon Capeling-Alakija:
The head of the department responsible for recruiting onsite UN Volunteers and managing their applications successfully petitioned to create an unwritten policy that only onsite volunteers could be called “UN Volunteers”, not online volunteers recruited and engaged through the online platform, even if they were supporting UN initiatives. She also refused all of my attempts to walk her through the online volunteering platform and to potentially integrate some of its features into UNV’s overall application system (she had only VERY reluctantly agreed to the creating of an online application system for onsite UN Volunteers – she preferred postal mail and faxing).
A survey of all UNV HQ staff found that, in the three years following the site coming under the sole management of UNV, the vast majority had never logged into the online volunteering platform. This was despite frequent internal presentations about online volunteering.
Presentations to UNV program managers, who were responsible for overseeing the creation of UNV assignments and managing those UNVs in the field, would provide examples of what online volunteers were actually doing, yet, the response from the majority of participants would always be, “I just don’t see how those roles can be done by online volunteers.”
In my last four weeks at UNV, the new head of UNV noted to me that the online volunteering service would be eliminated unless a funder was found, because he didn’t think it was that important – and given that he successfully eliminated the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), I was pretty sure that virtual volunteering within UNV was doomed.
And here we are, almost 20 years later, and UNV has launched a Unified Volunteering Platform and Unified Conditions of Service. This new Unified Volunteering Platform (UVP) has brought together UNV’s onsite UNV assignment recruitment and the UN’s Online Volunteering Platform (OV) – that means www.onlinevolunteering.org no longer exists as a distinct entity. Via this new unified platform, organizations can request services of both onsite and online volunteers, and candidates can apply for both onsite UN Volunteer assignments and online assignments. It is the single-entry point for all UNV partners – from candidates for onsite and online volunteering to donors, funding partners and UNV personnel and partner organizations.
I love that UNV now, at last, sees its online volunteering engagement as part of its overall volunteer engagement. I would love to know how it happened! But this change, this unified platform, comes at a big cost: UNV no longer allows any nonprofit or NGO that’s working on behalf of the developing world to recruit online volunteers via its platform. The only organizations allowed to use the platform to recruit online volunteers are “eligible partners”: UN entities (UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, etc.), those with accreditation with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), or an organization working with a UN Country Team as an implementing partner. That means small NGOs who don’t have a formal partnership with UNV or aren’t working with a UNV in the field are now locked out of the platform for recruiting online volunteers.
But even with those costs, ultimately, it’s the right decision, because it means UNV now makes it clear that ALL of the volunteering it facilitates, including online volunteering, must be in support of the goals of communities in developing countries, and must have real impact – it must put the needs of the communities first. It further distances UN Volunteers, including online volunteers, from voluntourism or vanity volunteering.
What will happen to the domain onlinevolunteering.org? Not sure. For now, it points to UNV’s new unified platform. But UN agencies are notorious for not keeping URLs it no longer uses as its primary address (like unvolunteers.org, which now goes nowhere) or for programs that have sunsetted, no matter how popular, like all the many sites associated with International Year of Volunteers in 2001, or worldvolunteerweb.org. So if you have a virtual volunteering initiative, you should keep an eye on the onlinevolunteering.org URL for when UNV inevitably abandons it.
If you want to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book. UNV’s Online Volunteering Service is referred to frequently in the book, and some of its star online volunteers are featured.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
All around the world, particularly in the USA, online volunteers, most working on their own, independent of any formal group, have been trying to put together SIV, P-1 and P-2 visa applications for Afghans who helped the USA military, USA programs and USA citizens working in Afghanistan. SIV folks worked with USA Armed Forces as translators or interpreters in Iraq or Afghanistan. The P-2 visa is for Afghans who helped in USAID-funded projects, participated in US State Department programs, or helped women start businesses, access education and health care and promote women’s rights – all things that will make them the target of the Taliban.
For 20 years, these Afghans completely embraced ideas that the Taliban finds abhorrent: women in most workplaces and professions, a free, questioning press, sports for everyone, music, art, movies, social media, travel abroad, and a vibrant, active civil society. Western reporters interviewed these Afghans, profiled them in heart-warming stories on TV and in online news sites, with quotes and photos. I worked alongside some of these Afghans in 2007, mostly in Kabul, but also briefly in the Pansjir Valley and Kandahar. I took photos with them, I blogged about them, and after I left the country, we stayed in touch, I edited press releases and reports they wrote in their jobs, we met up when they visited the USA.
And now, that work, those travels, those photos, those public pats on the back over two decades, may get them killed. That cherished certificate of recognition from the US State Department or some other foreign government has suddenly become a potential death sentence.
This effort, which is largely taking place on WhatsApp and Signal, has been called a “digital Dunkirk.” – The Atlantic, “Escape From Afghanistan,” August 23, 2021.
For the last two weeks of August and most of September, I’ve been part of this global virtual volunteering endeavor, this “digital Dunkirk.” And we’ve largely been a failure.
We’ve stay up late with and gotten up early for our desperate, terrified Afghan colleagues, messaging back and forth in those hours when the time difference has us all up at the same time, giving them updates on what we’ve found out and what we’ve done, reading their updates about what they are seeing, debunking rumors they’ve heard (and there are SO MANY rumors), offering sympathy and encouragement while trying to not sound glib or shallow. We’ve spent hours and hours on visa applications, reading the guidelines over and over, making sure that absolutely every bit of essential info the State Department might want is there, exercising the bits they don’t but that Afghans feel so proud of, like a declaration of honorary citizenship for some US city they visited. Part of the trouble with helping many Afghans stems from having trouble getting contact info for former employers that they worked for five to 10 or 15 years ago – work that could still get them killed now, under the Taliban. For Afghans we didn’t work with directly, we research former employers, track down the names of staff, write them, beg them. We continue to track down US staff who used to work at the Afghanistan embassy, people who have carefully hidden their email addresses because they are, no doubt, overwhelmed with strangers emailing them – including buying a subscription to LinkedIn just so we can message these people – and we ask, could you sign off on this P2 application I prepared for so-and-so? Only you can do it, because I didn’t work with him. It has to be you. Won’t you please? We’ve written our US Representatives and US Senators, telling them what we’re doing, asking if they can look into the matter for this person, specifically. We wonder just how far we can stretch the definition of de facto family in an application, to include nieces, nephews, adult brothers, in-laws… We look at the revised visa requirements for other countries and do the best we can in putting together applications for them, too.
We write, and research, and re-write, and research, and answer texts all morning and all night. We sometimes believe that if we slept, if we stepped away from our phones, we might miss an opportunity to help someone escape the country. We also scrub our social media accounts and web sites and blogs of photos and identifying info for all the Afghans we’ve worked with, both back in Afghanistan and right here in the USA.
The last two weeks of the US at the Kabul airport were horrific. One Afghan colleague never got her US paperwork – she still hasn’t, despite my US Senator’s staff assuring me that they had looked into the matter and it’s “in process” – but she did get visas for herself and her whole family for Australia. They rapidly packed and drove to the airport. They never got close to the gate – they never even got out of the car. It was a terrifying experience, and when they finally realized the Taliban would not let them through, even by foot, they returned home, defeated, despondent. A few hours later, the bomb went off. They were safe, for the moment – but we knew they weren’t getting out any time soon. It was like hearing a massive door slam shut.
The vast majority of the people that the Digital Dunkirk volunteers have tried to help have not gotten out of Afghanistan. Those people, those US and Australian and UK and French and German allies, are hiding at home, wondering when they will run out of money for Internet access, when they will run out of food, when a landlord will turn on them for not paying rent, and when a neighbor will turn them in, knowing they could win favor with the Taliban for doing so.
And we tremble when a social media account of an Afghan colleague goes silent.
When people say volunteering feeds the soul, that it lifts you up, that it’s oh-so-healthy, they are leaving out the volunteering, onsite or online, that is soul-draining, that it can leave you feeling helpless and distraught despite pouring so much into it. I’ve always bristled when people say, “Virtual volunteering is great for people who don’t have a lot of time to volunteer” or “virtual volunteering is impersonal!” Neither statement is true – not of any virtual volunteering I’ve ever researched, and especially not for the virtual volunteering I’ve most recently been a part of.
Per my virtual volunteering experience in this Digital Dunkirk: I’m exhausted. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. And I’m out of tears some days. And if you tell me the value of this volunteering in terms of the number of hours I contributed and the dollar value of those hours, I will probably want to hit you in the face as hard as I possibly can. I won’t, because I am committed to non-violence, but I’ll want to.
I’m not alone in this virtual volunteering – I’m in contact with folks at an NGO that are trying to get more than a dozen families out, and it’s been wonderful to share information, advice and frustrations. There’s also:
Task Force Pineapple, a high-profile effort by US military personnel and others that successfully evacuated more than 1000 Afghan allies and their families.
More than 40 volunteers at the University of Pittsburgh‘s Center for Governance and Markets are (were?) helping too. And then there are people like me, alone, trying to help Afghans they worked with: I see the posts all over Twitter and my LinkedIn account by people asking for advice, reporting their own progress, linking to some resource they’ve found.
There’s Special Operations Association of America (SOAA) is comprised of USA volunteers that says it is working side-by-side with the US government “to bring home our wartime brothers and sisters. Our mission is to safely provide humanitarian support in direct support of US policy.”
In this incredible 50 minute podcast, “Roamings and Reflections,” humanitarian assistance and international development expert Sasha Ghosh-Siminoff joins host Nicholas Heras to recount the massive effort to evacuate Afghans as the Taliban seized Kabul. It really captures what those days in Afghanistan were like for the online volunteers in the USA and elsewhere trying desperately to get people on those last flights. Many US government workers were risking their jobs by helping volunteers trying to get Afghans out of the country on those last flights. At one point, Ghosh-Siminoff says that, rather than digital Dunkirk, the effort, “was more of a digital Schindler’s List.”
This Stars and Stripes story, Afghan evacuation took hidden toll on mental health of volunteers who tried to help, notes that many of the volunteers in Digital Dunkirk efforts are military veterans who served in Afghanistan Veterans who had unresolved trauma from their time at war and thought helping to evacuate people would “make things right,” according to Amy Williams, the chief clinical officer at Headstrong. The story notes that members of an online support group for such volunteers said they didn’t think they could complain about their stress when Afghans have far worse situations, or they they didn’t think others would understand what they had gone through. Some volunteers, though, said they did not feel any adverse effects from their unsuccessful efforts to help Afghans. On the contrary, they said they feel better for having tried.
Of course, the stress and frustration of online volunteers in this effort is nothing compared to the Afghans we’re trying to help. In addition to being terrified of the knock at the door that means the Taliban is there, to search the home, to take away boys and young men to fight, to take away girls for rape (there’s no such thing as “child marriage” – please stop saying that), to find files and data that could prove someone in the family worked with the USA, the UK, Australia, or some European country, Afghans are also running out of money and food.
All this volunteering may be for naught. The visa applications may never come through, and even if they do, these many thousands of Afghans may never get out of the country. Many may be murdered. The women, in particular, will suffer horribly.
For the online volunteers trying to help, no certificate, no statistic on the monetary value of the time they contributed, no t-shirt, is going to serve as appropriate recognition for what they’ve done. There’s just one way we’re going to feel good about our virtual volunteering: getting people out of Afghanistan.
It’s been so worthwhile to connect with other volunteers, sharing resources and feeding off of each other to maintain hope. And a shoutout to the friend that isn’t involved in any of this, but listens to me rant and gives me words of encouragement – she’s helping to, as an online volunteer, even if she doesn’t know it. Thank you to everyone out there that’s volunteering online to help Afghanistan, whether it’s to help people get out, pressure their own governments to, in turn, pressure the Taliban to keep their promises (which they mostly have NOT so far, in case you aren’t paying attention), or to help Afghan refugees in their own country. I see you. I value you. Others do too. Keeping doing what you can.
Also, don’t you dare tell me that virtual volunteering is impersonal.
I have an Afghanistan Twitter list that I use to stay abreast of what’s happening in the country – it’s public – you can use it too. I’ve put together this list of ways Afghans can keep their computers and phones safe, and I’ve put together this list of online resources for Afghans trying to teach girls at home (frustrating, as most Afghans don’t have Internet access, most Afghans don’t read English, and all these are in English – there really needs to be a site in Dari and Pashto, but I can’t find such). You can feel free to share these resources with anyone you think could benefit from such, and your suggestions for additions to these resources would be helpful.
A sad turn of events has many of us feeling especially pessimistic: the State Department sent an email on September 9th to at least some Afghans who had applied for the P-1 visa, that said, in part:
Please note that case processing cannot begin until/unless you relocate to an eligible processing country. Processing is not feasible in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. Once you have relocated to a country where refugee processing can occur, you will need to inform the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration… of your current location and contact information for your referral to be assigned to a U.S.-funded overseas Resettlement Support Center for case processing… The United States is unable to provide protection or support to you while you await a decision on your refugee case. Case processing can be lengthy (potentially 12-14 months), so please be aware that this process could require living in and supporting yourself and your family in a third country for a substantial amount of time until case processing is complete. Even if you qualify for the P-1 or P-2 program and travel outside of Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that you will be approved for resettlement to the United States.
The information has been a gut punch to the Afghans I’m working with. Do I tell them now to get out of Afghanistan, anyway they can, even illegally, and once in that country, follow what the US State Department has said? What do I say now? I have no idea. And neither do all the other online volunteers I work with.
But Digital Dunkirk continues.
If you are helping people who are still in Afghanistan and are trying to get out, I have a Google Shared drive where I am sharing all of the information and links I have found helpful. If you see something in the drive that is inaccurate or outdated, or you have resources that I could add to such, please email me at jcravens42 “at” yahoo.com, putting “helping Afghans” in the subject line.
And in case you are wondering: I am working to support five Afghans and their families to leave the country.
Two are women I worked with when I was there in 2007. Their P-1 and P-2 applications, which I submitted since I worked directly with them in work that was funded in part by USAID, have been flagged by one of my US Senators, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. One women needs to get out by herself, but another needs to get her sister, her mother and four nieces out. Next steps? Finding a way for them to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications).
One is a man, who did some work for the US Embassy. I have the names of the US Embassy staff who signed off on his payment paperwork. Only they can submit his paperwork. And they won’t reply to my emails. I now need to find someone who worked at the US Embassy who will be willing to submit his P-2 paperwork.
One got out of the country with his immediate family and is now, supposedly, in process for his P-2 – and since this is being handled by a US-based nonprofit I did not work with, there’s not much I can do other than share hopeful info.
One is someone who was a part of a USA-based nonprofit that I have volunteered with – that nonprofit has submitted his application for a P-2 application, but he’s stuck in Afghanistan, like my two colleagues. One staff member at the nonprofit was trying to communicate with 14 people that was associated with this nonprofit, and it just became way too much, so she’s creating teams of volunteers to be the primary contact for each of the 14 people. I’m on a team for a man who is a journalist. Next steps? Finding a way for him and his family to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications) and any associations of journalists abroad who might care about his situation and want to help in some way.
If you can help with any of the aforementioned four situations, contact me.
Update: One of the people I have been helping made it to Pakistan with her four nieces and mother, and then was able to go on to Australia, because she attended university there many years ago and that network has been working to get alumni out. Her sister was unable to go too – she could not get a visa for her. I continue to try to help her sister and others.
Update: Another perspective on being a part of the online #DigitalDunkirk, to get our endangered allies, the people we put into this precarious position, out of Afghanistan. This is not the warm and fuzzy just-show-up-when-you-feel-like virtual volunteering story you will find elsewhere. The emotional toll is real.
Update: One of the people I was trying to help got out, no thanks to me nor the USA. She’s now in Australia with her nieces and mother, and she wrote this account of why she fled and what her final weeks in Kabul were like. Her sister, her brother and her brother’s family remains. One of my co-workers also remains there. The USA is their only hope – and the USA offers no help to get them out.
I have a commitment to blogging something worthwhile every week, and publishing that new, worthwhile blog every Monday. But to stay fresh and worthwile, I take breaks. And I’m doing that again now.
Until the end of September, I won’t be blogging. During that time, I will first be grading papers for my class at Gratz College, and then I will be on an epic road trip via motorcycle. I will also not be checking my email. And I won’t return calls unless they are urgent. As this blog is moderated, no new comments sent while I’m gone will be posted until I’m back and can moderate them.
If you are from the press and need to reach me urgently for an interview, DM my Twitter account. I cannot guarantee I’ll see it immediately, but it’s the most likely way.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
National Public Radio (NPR) news has had two stories recently regarding how volunteers serving on the boards of public institutions across the USA are being harassed by angry, volatile community members angry about COVID-19 prevention protocols, and the stress and fears regarding their safety is leading many to quit.
One story profiles a school board member in Indiana whose adult son drove two hours from his home to be with her during a school board meeting to ensure her safety against aggressive audience members. He took his mother in his car so protesters wouldn’t know her car and be able to identify it later around town. When the meeting was over, he circled her block for 30 minutes to make sure no one was following them to her home.
Charlie Wilson is the past president of the National School Boards Association and a school board member since 2007. But he won’t be running for another term: he reports getting daily hate emails and sometimes phone calls and, occasionally people knocking on his door, “threatening to do all kinds of things.”
In another NPR story, a Nevada school board member said he had thoughts of suicide before stepping down amid threats and harassment. In Virginia, a board member resigned over what she saw as politics driving decisions on masks. The vitriol at board meetings in Wisconsin had one member fearing he would find his tires slashed.
Police have been called to intervene in places including Vail, Colorado, where parents protesting a mask mandate pushed their way into a board room in April, and in Mesa County, Colorado, where Doug Levinson was among school board members escorted to their cars by officers who had been unable to de-escalate a raucous August 17 meeting. “Why am I doing this?” Levinson asked himself.
In his letter of resignation from Wisconsin’s Oconomowoc Area School Board, Rick Grothaus said its work had become “toxic and impossible to do.” He resigned August 15 along with two other members, including Dan Raasch, who wondered if his car and windshield would be intact after meetings.
School board members are usually unpaid volunteers, often parents, grandparents, or former educators who step forward to donate their time to shape school policy, choose a superintendent and review the budget. But a growing number are resigning or questioning their willingness to serve as meetings have devolved into shouting contests between deeply political constituencies over how racial issues are taught, masks in schools, and COVID-19 vaccines and testing requirements.
The National School Boards Association’s interim executive director, Chip Slaven, said there isn’t evidence of widespread departures, but he and several board members reached by The Associated Press said the charged political climate that has seeped from the national stage into their meetings has made a difficult volunteer role even more challenging, if not impossible.
Volunteer engagement on civic bodies, like school boards, planning commissions, public safety or police advisory commissions and other government bodies is supposed to give decision-making and responsibilities to people who don’t have a financial stake in the outcome of decisions, who don’t fear that losing that role will affect their income – because it isn’t their job. And having public meetings means community members can have an outlet for their opinions, and get those opinions in the public record. Even before COVID-19, it was often largely thankless work. People have signed up for these volunteering roles, or even run to be elected for such, for a variety of reasons: many because they feel an obligation to serve their community, that it’s a part of their obligation to the society in which they are a part. Some do it because they aspire to elected office in their city, county, state – even nationally – and they need the experience. Some do it because they want to have a greater profile in their community, maybe because they think it will lead to more customers for their business or that they will get noticed and hired by a place where they want to work. Highly partisan politics and ideology are not top of mind for most of them – but even before the global pandemic, there would be movements, largely by people on the extreme right, to get volunteers involved who would push an agenda: stopping evolutionary biology from being taught in schools, requiring prayer at public events, pushing for ordinances that would close a health clinic for women that provides abortion services or that would prevent affordable housing from being built, etc. There are now more candidates than ever who are single-issue focused or openly partisan running for the coming school board elections across the country.
Managers of volunteers and consultants regarding volunteerism and volunteer engagement: what is your advice for supporting volunteers in these roles? We can’t stop the hostility at meetings, but how can we support volunteers we want in these roles, so they don’t quit, so they won’t feel endangered or so stressed out they quit? What support should they expect in these roles? Comment below:
