Volunteering in a new city
By: Lydia Hodgins
Tags: Belfast, Volunteering, Social Enterprise

When I moved to Belfast it was a priority for me to get involved in some volunteering as soon as possible. I realise that’s not a hugely impactful statement from someone whose 10 to 6 for the last three years consisted of espousing the value of local volunteering but even if I wasn’t being paid for it I would still be a big advocate of volunteering on your doorstep.

During the last 6 months that I lived in Oxford I pretty much always saw someone I knew when I left the house. Sometimes that can be annoying when you realise you probably can’t nip to Co-op in your PJ bottoms anymore at the risk of bumping into someone but it actually plays an important role in feeling connected to where you live and the local community. Although I have family and friends in here, I don’t feel very well networked in Belfast and I knew that volunteering would be a fast-track way to building the familiarity that contributes to feeling connected to a place.

Two weeks in to Belfast life, I went to visit L’Arche Belfast’s Root Soup project, which organises a community lunch 2–3 times a week. L’Arche is an international organisation made up of 147 communities bringing together people with and without intellectual disabilities to live together and take part in different programmes. In Belfast, L’Arche offers housing as well as running arts, gardening and cooking programmes. Root Soup operates as a social enterprise, it provides an opportunity for L’Arche members to gain kitchen skills and experience by preparing food, hosting lunches and catering for events. Root Soup benefits from the produce from L’Arche’s own gardening projects, which take place in allotments around Belfast. It also strives to tackle food waste by buying produce from Fare Share. All-round a pretty impactful model!

A Root Soup session starts with a short brief on the lunch menu. What started out as simple soup and bread lunches 8 years ago has evolved into a choice of hot lunches with desserts and tea/coffee (for only £3 too!). We then partner-up volunteers or support workers with L’Arche members and divvy-up tasks. Everyone does a bit of everything to get the food ready and tables set ready to welcome customers for lunch.

As lunch is served we all take a moment to enjoy the food we’ve prepared and dot ourselves around the room, getting to know regulars and new-comers. Each lunch has a strong base of supporters and it’s lovely to get to know the familiar faces and watch relationships develop between everyone. True to expectations, it has been a fab way to get stuck in to things in Belfast again, meeting a whole range of people I wouldn’t otherwise and learning about the city from them. Plus I absolutely love working in the kitchen!

Tips for choosing and committing to a voluntary project:

The first volunteering experience I remember was litter picking with the Brownies along an A road. The gloves smelled strangely of margarine, there weren’t enough litter pickers for everyone and it didn’t feel like we would ever be able to pick up enough litter to make a difference. Amazingly, 20 years ago you could motivate kids by giving them a can of Fanta at the end. Point being, it’s important to choose a quality volunteering project that you will enjoy and feel like you are making an impact so that you can commit to it regularly.