Community volunteering opportunities

When it comes to a mindfulness journey and actual dream weaving practice, community volunteering is arguably the best way to go about it because it's relatively simple, direct, and you get to meet different people and get to know them in community. There are always numerous volunteerng opportunities in the Qultura community through Qultura Core (the core of the Qultura community) and there is a unique universal volunteering system which is totally self-identifying, self-regulating and self-perpetuating. This makes it radically different from traditional volunteering where you're normally stuck to one role in one organization. Here you learn the basics.

Qultura Core differs slightly as the core of the community in that the central cause or issue is social stigma and social exclusion. Therefore what we expect from anyone 'moving into core', i.e. becoming involved in Qultura Core is that they commit to being in solidarity with those in the community who are stigmatized and excluded, i.e. the poor, destitute, marginalized, and socially excluded. In this way we are mindful of the Qultura community as an inclusive, empathy focussed community.

In the above illustration you have the schema for the base roles of Qultura Core's universal volunteering system. Qultura Core is the core of the Qultura community. It's not an organization. There is no mission statement or policies or rules to follow. There is no hierarchy or management. There are no fixed or predetermined volunteering roles, so there is no application process, nothing formal, nothing official. Therefore there is no attachment to roles, no roles are imposed on you, because the universal volunteering system is designed to be completely self-identifying, self-regulating and self-perpetuating. Essentially you come into Qultura Core to help develop the community and you're completely free to decide what role you assume at any time on the basis of these base roles.

Base roles defined

So what do the terms in the first illustration mean? What is a community support volunteer? What is a community volunteer? What is a community activist? What is reverse participation? Let's examine the definitions.

Reverse participation

Reverse participation is designed for anyone who feels they need community support from others and/or who feel that they are affected by social stigma or social exclusion. This is largely subjective and worked out on the Community Message Board, and is designed to give those affected by social exclusion an immediate sense of inclusivity and social inclusion by bringing them into Core and part of the universal volunteering system. However unlike the other volunteering roles people who have reversed their participation in the community can reach out or ask the community for people to help them out with stuff and thus they can create new volunteering and activist opportunities for others. However as no money changes hands, when it comes to material or financial support we signpost such people further to an organization outside our community, but provide emotional and psychological support.

Community support volunteer

This is the default volunteering base role. This is you being a part of the Qultura Core community, being present, being proactively involved, participating in projects and events, lending your emotional and psychological support to other people, being yourself, and generally sitting round, drinking cups of tea and coffee, chatting and talking to different people, and participating in discussions both on the Community Message Board and at in person meetings, such as Human Library events and dream weaving activities. You're not really 'required' to do anything else outside this and don't really have any set tasks. That saying this is an incredibly important role because you being you and being around helps other people recover their self-confidence, feel comfortable being in the community and is appreciated a lot by people who have reversed their participation in the community.

Community volunteers

To keep this relatively simple a community volunteer is anyone who does something for other people so as to develop the community. Examples of a community volunteering role is to help develop and maintain a community project such as the Human Library project, or Qultura Connect, or help out with the Community Library, or moderating on the Community Message Board, or simple administration, creating content for the Community Blog, creating multimedia content (such as podcasts and videos), and so on.

Community activists

A community activist is anyone who directly interacts with other people so as to develop the community. This could be something such as raising awareness and understanding of Qultura among people in the wider local community, facilitating meetings and talking about Qultura within organizations, bringing new people into the community, posting to other people about Qultura on social media platforms, and so on.

Creating a specific role

Above you have very broad, non-specific base roles which give you a specific and generic field of interest. Unlike traditional volunteering roles what you then have to do is to create your own specific volunteering role on the basis of your individual interests, background, experience and aptitudes. You don't have to stick with one role, you can create more than one role, you can change roles, switch roles, mix and match different roles, and even try out different roles or new roles. The key point here is that you don't necessarily have to become attached to one specific role.

Please keep in mind that community volunteering is nothing like paid employment or paid work. There is no 'should' or 'must'. If you are a member of our community and want to move into Core to do some community volunteering then whatever role you create needs to tick all three of the following boxes:

• Your role should be something that you are able and willing to do for others in the community.
• Your role should be something that you really enjoy doing and which is in some way beneficial to you.
• Your role should be something which you can do which other people will enjoy and appreciate you doing for them.

How to create and propose volunteering roles

You can both either propose a volunteering role or create a volunteering need (or role) in the Qultura Core community which is a category of discussion boards on our Community Message Board. This means that to become involved in Qultura Core and actually 'move into Core' you first need to be registered on our Community Message Board as a member of the Qultura community. If you're moving into Core for the first time and becoming involved as a community volunteer for the first time, a courtesy message sent via the 'Contact' page to the founder and core members is good practice and enables us to provide you with help and support through the process.

As there's no set or predetermined roles, because every role is a role you yourself create, there's no set conditions, dates or hours either. Everything is designed to be worked out on the Community Message Board so whenever you want to do some community volunteering all you need to do is login to the Community Message Board, find out what's going on, and decide when and how you want to get involved. You can also do this via email or Whatsapp (there's both a Qultura and a Qultura Core Whatsapp group) but once we get a community back it would be preferable to make arrangements via the Community Message Board.

You can find out more about the universal volunteering system and more detailed explanations of each base role on the Qultura Core website which is geared more towards the 'business end' of the Qultura community.

Visit the Qultura Core website

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