A year in the life of an aspiring portfolio careerist - the role of volunteering

I met Nikki Wilson at a portfolio careers networking event and she's guest blogged here for me before. In this post she describes her year as a 'portfolio volunteer' and how its helping her plan her portfolio career which she hopes to launch in 2012...

Nikki Wilson

For me, and I’m sure in fact most other people, volunteering is not an altruistic act.  It makes me feel alive, purposeful and motivated – ultimately feelings that I would like to experience more frequently in my working life and which, at least to a degree I feel a portfolio career may help me achieve both by allowing me to undertake a variety of roles that tap into some of my currently under-utilised skills and interests, but also providing more control over my working pattern so that I can continue my voluntary work.

Reflecting on 2011, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to undertake a range of different voluntary roles. Initially I assisted at a number of fundraising events for a pre-school as ultimately I'd like to include work with children in my portfolio career. I was struck by how good it felt to be involved in a community activity and this helped to confirm in my mind a feeling I’d had for a long time that I want to move back to that environment and away from town.

The second, and most personally challenging experience was volunteering for a week at an orphanage in Moldova.  This was far removed from any previous experiences but again reflects my growing commitment to child welfare.  The orphanage itself was clean, bright and well maintained and the children neatly dressed – in other words it didn’t reflect the shocking images of orphanages that have been shown on the television in the past.  However, it was difficult not to think too much about the children’s prospects – a life in institutions with little hope of ever becoming part of a family as there is barely any provision for fostering and adoption in Moldova.  A key concern was operating in an environment where little English is spoken, meaning that I had to employ a high degree of self reliance. This was timely as one of my concerns about launching a portfolio career is the potential feeling of isolation, more than likely working from home and needing to be self assured in my own abilities and judgements.

My next experience was rather closer to home.  As part of a wider programme, I was searching for a project I could undertake in 2012 with a small local charity and became involved with my local “Women’s Aid” organisation. I received a warm welcome and was immediately impressed by the way the charity was being run and so was enthusiastic to get started immediately, helping out in any way that was needed. Initially this involved Christmas gift wrapping but I've since also been able to help with funding research in the evenings and weekends at home.  This is significant in that I’ve often found it extremely difficult to find ways to support charities of my choice that fit with my working life and other commitments. I’m really hoping that I can go ahead with a larger project with this charity in 2012 and it’s definitely sharpened my thinking about the shape I’d like my work to take in the coming months.

Finally, over Christmas I fulfilled an aim that I’ve had for a number of years of volunteering with Crisis at Christmas (CC) and am very glad I did.  CC was a totally different volunteering experience to anything I’ve done before and is perhaps fairly unique in the immense number of volunteers that are brought together at any one time, all focused on one key aim of making the lives of the homeless visitors at least a little better over what must often be a very difficult period.  The centres are more or less completely run by volunteer leaders. It really challenges the old stereotype of volunteers as good hearted but ultimately unskilled individuals, proving that people from all walks of life and all professional backgrounds can find pleasure and fulfilment in undertaking voluntary activity and reinforced my own feeling, evidenced by many of the portfolio careerists I’ve met that complementing any mix of paid roles with some voluntary work is likely to create a mutual benefit for the charity, in providing access to the often considerable and broad range of skills that such a worker has, and for the individual in providing a platform to use those skills in a new and extremely interactive way.

So, in summary my 2011 “volunteer year” has allowed me to build my skills and contacts, develop my confidence and start to further refine my thinking about how ultimately I would like to begin to structure my portfolio career. The challenge now is to be able to build at least some elements in to my paid work, and to build more flexibility into my overall working pattern so that I can take advantage of the plethora of voluntary activities that I’m interested in undertaking.  My volunteering activities have incentivised me to develop the portfolio career that I’ve been thinking about for almost a year now and I really hope that in 2012 I find a way to make this a reality.