Gail's Story
For Gail Burton, finding somewhere to volunteer was one of her first priorities when she moved to Edinburgh from Canada...
“I think I just have a volunteering streak. I’ve always liked to help people and so I’ve always joined things, organisations, clubs. I’ve often ended up being the chair of the organisation – I think because I like to organise things and I like to do things fairly well and I like being with people. And I like to make a real difference, so I end up in that capacity.”
In the past, Gail managed her own facilitation business as well as helping to run several charity boards. She was looking for a new opportunity with a homelessness charity where she could put her skills to good use. She got in touch with Jean Cuthbert, Learning and Practice Officer at Volunteer Centre Edinburgh.
“I was so blown away by how much help Jean gave and how much information she shared. And the encouragement she gave me - Oh it was just marvellous! And then in a very short period of time there was a voluntary position that I could apply for. It was the chair of the management committee for Keymoves Support for Homeless Women. So with Jean’s help I put in my application in January and by April I was the chair of the management committee – just like that! I mean it sounds instant but it wasn’t – it was really hard work and it was thought provoking.
“Keymoves can house up to 20 homeless women at a time. They usually stay about 2-3 months or even longer if necessary. And the idea is to help them, look at their situation and find what they need to stabilise themselves and move forward. The management committee looks after the policies, help solve problems, do the strategic direction long term etcetera. Looking at where we want to be in three years time.
“I had had several board management positions at that point [in Canada] but I needed to learn a lot of things – like what do you call things? I mean I can speak about my experience in Canada and there I’m quite conversant about how things work – but here I’m not.
“Jean told me about Good2Great [Volunteer Centre Edinburgh’s training for management committees]. So the first March – even I think before I was the chair I went on the Good2Great day. It was wonderful, just wonderful. We had a really interesting exercise to do – we are a management committee and we’ve just gotten word that our chair person has some scandalous thing – he’d stolen money or he’d run off . We had to handle the press and everything – what were we going to do? We got to do a lot of hands on things as well as learn about what our role is in terms of responsibilities and we could ask questions. It was a full day of all kinds of learning and brainstorming with other people.
“ Some people were really new to volunteering in general so they’ve never done anything like this before and there were a couple that were real veterans. And then there were some women who were running a drop-in centre for women. There was such a variety of people eh. I loved it.”
Two years later Gail has made Edinburgh her new home, and continues to volunteer as chair of the Keymoves management committee.
“It has been and still continues to be such a learning curve. Learning the terminology – learning how social services work and how the funding works and how Keymoves works and how long it’s been around and the history of it – how the committee works and it’s very different from management committees that I’ve been on in the past. It gets pretty hectic at times but I really enjoy it.”