What it’s like to volunteer at Humanists Australia!
Hello, humanists of Australia! My name is Meagan and I’m an events volunteer for Humanists Australia in sunny Perth. I’ve been doing this volunteer job for a couple of months now and really enjoy it because I like finding out what is happening out there in the community and it’s a chance for me to support a cause that’s important to me at a grassroots level. It’s meaningful and that’s cool! I set aside a few hours a month to find relevant events and add them to our big spreadsheet – it’s simple and a great way to get involved.
What is an events volunteer, you may wonder? Well, HA recently decided to publish a calendar of local events that would be of interest to humanists, to help further our mission of helping to build strong and supportive humanist communities around the country. The job of the events volunteer is to find and list events that might be of interest to humanists in our local area – for me, Perth, but the team consists of vollies in most capital cities. We think events that would hold some interest for humanists would have intellectual and ethical or moral aspects, and importantly, not have anything to do with religion. All I have to do is search Google and exercise a little bit of judgment in discerning which events to add to our list, which is used to update the calendar on the website and in newsletters. It’s cool to think that this could add up to a big ripple effect of positive secular action in Australia.
The challenge for us is that humanism is so broad – we don’t have One Way to be a good person, after all, that’s the point – so there are many interpretations of what could actually be of interest to humanists. In the end it really comes down to informing you guys of what’s on around us and developing our sense of community as a group of like-minded people.
If you’re reading this and thinking that you might like to get involved and join us as an events volunteer, or if you’ve heard about an event that’s coming up and you think other humanists should know about it, please send an email to team.ha@humanistsaustralia.org or fill in the quick online form on the HA Volunteering page. We can’t wait to meet you at an event soon!
— Meagan