A day in the life of a volunteer

Being a volunteer isn’t as easy as it seems. We look into what really goes on inside our charity shops.

11 Be Humankind

Out the back sorting out everything to go on the online store

Volunteering. It might not sound like the most ideal, most appealing job in the world but Come on, working for a full day unpaid does

not sound like most sane peoples cup of tea. But for some it is exactly what they love to do.

There is a lot more to volunteering than just working for a day unpaid. I went to work at the Oxfam mu­sic shop, on the busy Southampton high street and learnt all about what goes on behind the scenes of a charity shop.

When I told my friends that I was going to be work­ing in the Oxfam music shop instead of mocking me or making fun they were all so excited and thought it was the coolest thing that I had ever done. This made me wonder why there were not more people out there volunteering in a local charity shop once or twice a week.

However, once I got there I realised that there were a lot of people that worked at the shop. The list of vol­!"#$$%&'("'#)$'*+,-$'./&'0*"1$%'#)/"'2-)0("3$%&'4(&#5

“I did start to look for a job, but then I came across the shop and it was the perfect to do on my days off at uni. It keeps mum happy,” said worker Grace.

It wasn’t the typical charity shop; it was more like a vintage record shop where you can go in and more #)/"'0(6$07',"3'8("709&'+%*:'/"7'3$-/3$;'.(#)':/"7'dating back as far as the 1800 Beethoven material.

“SOMETIMES THE RE-CORDS DON’T EVEN MAKE THE SHELF”

12Be Humankind

Volunteer Connor, 19, a student at Southampton So­lent University said: “Sometimes a lot of the records don’t even make the shelf when they arrive. During :7',%&#'.$$6')$%$'<'&=$"#'.$00'*>$%'?@A5B

The thing that amazed me the most about be­ing in the shop, was the vast amount of stock that they have. It made me wonder if it was even pos­sible that all of the stuff is actually donated. Helper, Anna Di’Angelo, 20 said: “Everything we have is all donated. One time a man came in and donated his whole record collection he had been gathering since the early 70s, he was a massive legend.”

Not only was there the shop but also most of the stock goes onto an online shop. They sell records at the cheapest possible rate, and then price them up before they go on sale to make sure that they get the cheapest rate. So it’s better to get the records you’ve been searching for on the Oxfam website rather than an online store like Ebay.

The online store attracts people from all over the world. Whilst packaging up the stock ready to send just in time for Christmas, I was confused as to why most of the addresses said United Kingdom, I as­sumed it was obvious that they were going to the United Kingdom. I then realised that a lot of the re­cords were going to all over the world and one even went all the way to Australia.

Front of house sorting through the mass amounts of records

Standing proud