CHESTER BORROWS: Selfless volunteers huge asset

PITCHING IN: Wanganui City College staff and students help clean up at Putiki on Monday after the weekend's flooding.PHOTO/FILE

WITH floods all around the region and everybody mucking in, how utterly appropriate that this is Volunteers Week.

Not only with shovels and brooms, but with a big red badge encouraging us to love our volunteers, people are out and doing the business. The usual rule applies, too - and that is that the ones actually doing the work seldom need a badge to self-identify.

Surveys have shown that the capital value of volunteers runs into billions of dollars if all that work were to be paid for either by the end user or the taxpayer. This factor is overlooked too readily in society and it seems a shame that volunteer hours are never counted as a plus for those otherwise on welfare. Some would say that with all the taxpayer money saved, it is they who are on welfare and not those registered as unemployed.

My 90-year-old mother-in-law, who plays her electric guitar and keyboard for the "old people" in the rest home and the myriad of octogenarian volunteers who deliver Meals on Wheels to the elderly give us all a giggle. But studies have shown that true happiness comes from doing for others without expectation of reward.

In a poll of what makes you happy, respondents showed that it was not money or security or family or friends that made people happiest but volunteering. Maybe that's why volunteers live longer.

And while we are feeling all warm and fuzzy, Whanganui and South Taranaki have been found to be the most prolific donators of their time to volunteer organisations compared to other areas of New Zealand.

When I attend events, it is amazing how I see the same faces time and again represented across many organisations. I hope it is that we are all very good at making ourselves available and not just a handful of us doing 10 times our share while the rest sit back and enjoy.

There is a difference, too, in those people who join clubs to continue in their hobbies and those who join to really help out. Are you a member for the benefits or are you there to benefit the members of the group, club, and social service organisation? One is really volunteering, the other is just belonging to a club - and anybody can do that.

I guess my last "shout out" in appreciation goes to those who are in paid positions but who go way over the top in their roles to help the community, like council staff who have not been home except to sleep or shave in a week since the first big rains came.

Those people might be remunerated for their work-a-day week but take on other roles in emergency situations to keep people safe or give some comfort in times of stress. Their homes may well be flooded, too, but they have put their duty first.

Consider our mayors with their own properties threatened, who have had to put all those considerations behind their public duties to lead communities in civil emergency. They have to pay others to do what they could be doing themselves but for the expectation that they will be at work not at home.

Yep, they all get paid a wage, and honorarium, or a stipend, but not to cover these situations.

So, to all volunteers, thanks for everything.