Can you imagine a volunteer workforce we could have if every
site and every plot holder were to give one hour a week to community initiatives?
London alone has some 750 sites and more than 30,000 plots and nationally there
are over 300,000 plots spread the length and breadth of the country and in
every town, city and community. Not only that but every site has a mix of
cultures and backgrounds and experience which is both rich in talent and
diverse in its mix.
Today I briefly watched as one of our members was pollarding
trees, chopping up branches and bundling them up to remove them. Having worked
with me earlier in the week he was beavering away by himself in an area of the
plots which has long been neglected and become a tangled web of branches and
overgrown.
Another member has established our community allotments in
Canary Wharf Crossrail station gardens. They not only did it, but with a small
handful of volunteers they help maintain it. They organise seed swaps and plant
swaps and this year grew some 400 plants to give away to plot holders.
The reality is we all must balance getting things done to
maintain the site and working on our own plots. We have to accept that the vast
majority just want to turn up, socialise, enjoy the peace of their plot, work
it and go home. There is nothing wrong with that and it is probably
unreasonable to expect anything more.
Someone told me of a scheme of community service at another
site. All plot holders are charged an extra £3 a year. If they do some
community work the money is returned; if not it is taken as their contribution
to the community. Obviously a very different approach to pure volunteering and
not one I think I would support as a willing worker is worth a handful of
reluctant ones.
I look at the site and jobs needing to be done. They do not all
need doing tomorrow, but it’s easy to spot those which will take a lot of work
and will struggle to get the manpower. We have a community greenhouse that blew
down a year ago and needs to be rebuilt but it takes two to fix it and this
year it has not been possible. We need to start to build a rainwater harvesting
system to collect from the pavilion and store and pump to the tanks to reduce
mains supply and reliance. We need to sort out an embankment that is slowly
collapsing. We need to pollard more trees and maintain those already in hand
and much more. Do we give up? No, we love the site too much and it may take
longer to finish a project, but we can do it.
This year we have drawn volunteers from the waiting list. It
doesn’t get them higher up the list, but it does get them involved. I wonder
what they think of the unwillingness of members to pick up the gauntlet and get
involved?
This is not a moan about non volunteers but a praise for
those who do volunteer, don’t just talk about it, but roll their sleeves up and
get stuck in with no reward other than the satisfaction of doing something for
the community. What is amazing is that
the person I mentioned at the beginning
isn’t young and is in fact into his eighties and volunteers to work on
the farm some 4 days a week and is busy all day long. If only we had a handful
like that, but like most sites the work falls on the willing and able minority,
and they just get on with it.
