It's Valentines' day tomorrow and I'm already planning the dinner I've promised to cook my other half. No doubt we will talk about how we met - which gives me a great topic for my volunteering blog this week...and I don't care if you think it's soppy......Happy Valentines
Second Month at work and an email sits in my inbox. "Get involved" it says and asks staff to volunteer and be trained in stone wall building techniques on the reserve. Well I'm not much of a bricky but having joined the RSPB a few weeks before I was feeling rather chipper and RSPB 'eager'.
So the email asks for volunteers and I definitely do want to get involved. I badger my Dad into going with me and suited up in old clothes and armed with lunch and drink, we march down to the reserve on a Saturday afternoon full to bursting with enthusiasm (this sensation is now becoming more familiar, the RSPB seems to do that to people).
Whacking the stones into perfect shapes and lining them up ready to be put back into the Stone wall was brilliant fun, and the demonstration by the stone mason was eye opening, there is a lot of skill involved. Fun was definitely had all round and I was pleased as pie with a phone number from one of the other staff volunteers having got chatting while wielding a hammer (men; they like the oddest things!)
My introduction to volunteering and the RSPB never slowed down, after stone wall building came scrub bashing, reed planting, Osprey monitoring, and the lovely brown eyes I met over the stone chippings became my husbands. Two children later and I can safely say that working and volunteering for the RSPB changed my life completely. It has given me a husband and two children! but more than that it has given me what was missing before; the motivation to support something bigger than myself , the knowledge that I am now part of a bigger group of like minded people and the realisation that I can make a difference.
Want to Volunteer? Ask me!