Miriam: How much were you paid?

Lynn:

For running the program, I was paid $15 per hour. However, that was the instructor component of it – it wasn’t the coordinator component of it. I guess I would like to see I volunteered when I coordinated, and when I was instructing, I was getting paid for it.

Miriam: Okay.

Lynn:

But I volunteered many more hours than instructed! If we were saying that instruction was 3 or 4 hours a week, and I worked 20 hours – so I was only getting paid 4 hours a week, when I was working 20 hours a week.

Basically, one thing that happened last year was there was a case where there wasn’t sufficient funding for us to run the program. I was very invested in the program at that point when that became an issue, so I decided to volunteer. As I’m there and realizing that the mandate is to target inner-city youth and empower them, I realize that one of the only reasons why I was able to be the instruction was because of my class. I wasn’t working that much; I was getting support from my family at the time, and I had a lot of time that I could invest into the project, that was needed to make it successful.

It’s different now. This time I was able to still invest into it. That is a problem – I was very aware that I wasn’t able to go into the class and say, “You could do this too! You could be a teacher like me!” I couldn’t say that to them. “You could teach this class just like I am!” But I couldn’t, because I would say, “No, I’m actually doing this for free” When you’re poor, you have a lot of time to volunteer – that’s sarcasm, by the way!

Volunteering is also some form of privilege. Accepting that people are very passionate and it’s a very good deed for people to volunteer is not a good way to start an organization, or a good standard to have if you want to have people contribute to the community. There has to be some benefits for them – not that there isn’t amazing benefits for me volunteering, but if you’re not eating first!

Miriam: Okay. Aside from affecting your program, how do you feel personally affected by the 20 hours or so of volunteer work that you’ve done? How has is changed your perception of your work?

Lynn:

That it's not fair too... I guess I do know that I’m going to be doing this, and I don’t want to be in a position where I’ll be taken advantage of for the work that I’m doing – like you know, “Lynn is going to do this, she’s such a great volunteer – let’s give her a certificate!” And then I’m starving at home. And how that affects me is that I know it’s not sustainable. I can’t continue like this, so it would only be for the time being, and eventually it’s going to run out.

Eventually, I’m going to have to work more hours full time that will pay me for all the work that I do. How that makes me feel is that there’s not a great investment or concern in our world for youth, or the work that people do work for. When I think about what’s going on in Toronto and the high homicide rates, I’m wondering how people are driving to such acts of violence. I see how my program fits into that picture. It is an investment of people, and if people start caring about that, then that would be a good start, I guess.