Image © Jose & MidJourney
Sometimes you realize things that are so simple and obvious, things perhaps one should have realized earlier. I went to a gathering of my beloved Design Museum Everywhere, their Accessibility, Improvement and Community vision, along with their Impact Areas and Programs make them a very unique organization. This was a Leadership Luncheon focused on Building a Pipeline for Future Designers. The room was full of a very diverse crowd, typical of the DME, and they had three extraordinary guests, Jennifer Rittner from Parsons, Tiffany Chu who is a trained designer serving as Chief of Staff of the Boston Mayor, and the mighty Debbie Millman and her spicy food for thought. One of these guest speakers said something that hit me with a mix of surprise and discomfort, followed by a certain level of “duhhh” mixed with some embarrassment. It was said that volunteering is a privilege and because of that it impacts the ideas and projects that get done.
I am sure many of us have volunteered, for many different causes, I will not attempt to speak for all that have volunteered, so this is my reflection about my volunteering journey. I have volunteered for things that exist, and for things that don’t, I’ve volunteered by donating time, money, and sometimes both. I’ve volunteered as a team lead, and as an anonymous cog in a precious wheel. I’ve volunteered just once, and I’ve repeated volunteering in the same outfit. I’ve done this in different continents, at different ages, but started only doing so as an adult, and that perhaps is a sign. A sign that indeed, volunteering, at least from where I sit, is seeded in privilege. I volunteered because I could, I had the time and the space in my life, capacity more than ability (I volunteered at doing things I did not have any ability at all…), I volunteered because I had resources, and I opted to put some of those resources at the service of something I believed, but I started out by having the resources. No regrets, no abdication of what I had, either handed to me or earned by my work, I started volunteering when I was able to do so in my life, and there is nothing wrong with it, but acknowledging it is a privilege is a first step to the second part of this recognition, that in using that privilege I impacted ideas and projects that get done.
Maybe we need to differentiate between donating and volunteering, but it’s all about resources. While some might think donating is the lazy way to volunteer, in many cases it is the only way. Some might also think volunteering only matters when you are doing so with not-for-profit organizations dealing with social and community challenges, but I see no difference between donating to the World Central Kitchen or the local Design Museum Everywhere, or to a documentary by women on food design, and while with the WCK I am unable to volunteer my time in situ, with the DME I try and do so whenever I can. All this activity is empowering these ideas and projects to exist, live and grow, no matter how small the act. Part of me says yes, that is the intent, the purpose.
But if you cannot volunteer, not because you wouldn’t want to, but because your life simply does not allow any meaningful folly with the limited resources you have, if this is chronic and because of that you are not in the room, in the space, in the conversations where directions are set, this leads me to question how many of the ideas and projects are influenced and impacted by privileged volunteers like me. While I own the fact that I volunteer and with that I own the impact, no matter how small, I wonder about purpose, and about justice and equity.
I will continue to volunteer my resources, but besides carefully choosing the ideas and the projects I volunteer with, which I tend to do, I am going to start questioning who is in the room, in the space, what conversations are taking place. I’m going to look more attentively at the fringes and identify seeds of ideas and projects that may benefit more from my resources to grow, I want to think of a way to volunteer my resources to human beings that will allow them to volunteer their resources, providing this way the time and space for them to be agents of transformation via their volunteering. Not sure how, but now that I am aware, change has started.