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Quite a few of these "opportunities" are asking a LOT of volunteers, implicitly asking for unpaid labor. These are not your typical "volunteer a few hours a wee
by circuit 3y ago
Quite a few of these "opportunities" are asking a LOT of volunteers, implicitly asking for unpaid labor. These are not your typical "volunteer a few hours a week helping fix up a school/sorting at a food bank/helping the homeless" to give back to your community.
Look at this[1] particular ask:
> Applicants must be available to work a minimum of 32 hours per week.
> [minimum 3 month commitment with possibility to extend to a year] ... Weekend and holiday work is required.
> shovel snow for extended periods of time, hike-ski-snowshoe in extreme weather conditions with a 35-pound backpack at 7,000ft, live in remote locations with regularly snow packed roads.
> Groceries and shopping facilities are approximately 60 miles away; reliable personal transportation is required.
[1] https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a093d000000yFWrAAM/preventive-search-and-rescue-psar-volunteer https://www.volunteer.gov/s/volunteer-opportunity/a093d00000...
- stephenr 3y agoI think you missed out this part: > Housing is included
- circuit 3y agoYou missed the last half of that sentence. It's a room, not a house, that you will be likely be sharing with someone else. > room in a shared apartment or house.
- arrakeenrevived 3y agoThe target audience of volunteers for this type of position are people that are probably used to happily sleeping in tents and eating camp food for days/weeks at a time. I don't think they'd mind.
- abluecloud 3y agoguess it's a race to the bottom then
- Apocryphon 3y agoIt’s for the self-selecting who see it as an experience, not a race.
- stephenr 3y agoWhy would you expect it to be an entire house for one person? It's a volunteer position in a national park, not Jimmy Carters newest deal: homes for extremely introverted humans.
- hyperhopper 3y agoAs somebody that's enjoyed many months living exclusively in hostels: You're out of your mind. Homes should be a standard. That's like, one of the basic human wants/needs as an organism. And having the privacy of your own space is essential to the human psyche.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoWhat?
- hyperhopper 3y agoWhich part are you confused about? I like to have a lock on my door.
- stephenr 3y agoThe part where you started comparing a private room in a shared house/apartment, with a hostel.
- abluecloud 3y agodoes that include food and drink?
- kjlkjlkjkj 3y agohealthcare too? and food and pension?
- seabass-labrax 3y agoI don't know how it works across the pond, but in Britain, some amount of volunteer activity is allowed whilst officially unemployed. This means that the country contributes National Insurance payments on your behalf so that you'll be able to receive treatment by the National Health Service and a state pension. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/volunteering-and-claiming-benefits https://www.gov.uk/guidance/volunteering-and-claiming-benefi... https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility
- michaelmrose 3y agoOn this side of the pond unemployment is mostly 13-26 weeks of a fraction of the money you earned previously and requires you to be actively seeking and available for work. You can neither be volunteering nor pursuing education even if you are laid off and need training in another field. In some particularly stingy places this is as little as the equivalent of 80 pounds per week whereas rent is oft closer to 800 pounds per month. In many cases its something you receive later after weeks or months of bureaucratic wrangling after you would long ago have lost your housing if you didn't have any of your own money saved. Hell we make sure you can't exploit the system by getting food stamps or housing help while going to college even if you are poor as a church mouse. Heck we set the benefits threshold low enough that as you move from part time employment to full time employment the poorest households experience a hump where if you move to full time you may end up poorer than you started because you lose more benefits than you gain income. This is especially true if you go from free medical care to $500-$800 out of pocket. Because most professions don't involve doubling your wages regularly one has to in effect agree to take on more work to climb into greater poverty in order to work your way out the other side IF increasing costs ever let you get ahead in the first place. One of the most attractive ways OUT of permanent poverty is naturally a college education however this will almost certainly be by way of borrowing tens of thousands of dollars but since you don't qualify for benefits during your education and you need to keep eating and living inside you are liable to need to continue to work full time which creates a much higher chance of failure which stands to leave you without a degree with thousands of dollars of undischargable debt. This concludes our tour of one of the shitty parts of America.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- constantly 3y agoWhere exactly are you drawing the line before using scare quotes around volunteering? Is 10 hours a week too much? Is requiring transportation too much? Would working at 5,000ft vs 7,000ft be ok? For what it’s worth: if I were at a time in my life where I could do the linked opportunity, I absolutely would. Even better would be an Antarctica opportunity for a winter season.
- circuit 3y agoDepends on the person, but requiring anything over 30 hours a week to me is part-time work commitment, and compensation is deserved
- constantly 3y agoThen if I were you, I would absolutely not take any volunteer opportunities that don’t meet this criterion. Otherwise, in some cases these seem like amazing opportunities that pay in experiences much more valuable than money. Working at Crater Lake would be a dream come true for me.
- mistrial9 3y agosomewhat similar to unpaid internships for adults who have finished an expensive 18 month MBA program? slightly worse?
- stephenr 3y agoI'd wager the volunteers are less annoying to be around.
- arrakeenrevived 3y agoSome of these postings are indeed asking a lot, but I don't think this specific one is that crazy. It's essentially an opportunity to live out in the wilderness and go hiking regularly, with free housing provided in exchange for maintenance and rescue work. I know a lot of outdoors enthusiasts that would love to do that. Hell, I know a lot of outdoors enthusiasts that would probably do it without the free housing, or even pay out of pocket to do it (see also: PCT or Appalachian Trail hikers).
- waveBidder 3y agonot exactly what I'd describe as volunteering though.
- apwell23 3y agoyea thats more like barter
- lazyasciiart 3y agoNo. It’s a legal status that says you will perform work for a registered nonprofit and they will cover some of the costs you incur, but you will not come out materially/financially ahead.
- bruce511 3y agoI'm going to suggest a new term here - "context dissonance". This occurs when you see something, and because it doesn't apply to your context, you can't imagine it applying to any context. For example, you use Linux, and can't understand why anyone would use Windows. Or you're a work-from-home fan and can't understand why some people want to work in an office, or why management might need it. Or, as in thus case, if you work primarily for money the idea of a job that pays in something other than money seems exploiting. Whereas, of course, there are lots of people who have enough money to meet their needs, and are instead looking for something else. Solitude, Community, Experience and so on. I don't say this to be disrespectful at all, but part of maturing is in understanding that others can have a different point of view of things. We don't all have to be the same, with the same goals. These are unpaid positions, with specific requirements and benefits. Clearly they don't sppareal to you and thats fine, but perhaps, just perhaps, there's someone out there this is perfect for.
- GavinMcG 3y agoThese full-time positions are fairly common at National Park Service (or other agency-managed) public lands, and are attractive to retirees. I was a paid (and housed) intern at one site, but I lived alongside three or four couples in their RVs. Some used it as a way to vacation, while for others it was more of a lifestyle, volunteering for four months at one location, then traveling for a couple months before volunteering at another location.
- karaterobot 3y agoThis feels like making something into a problem when it's not a problem. These are volunteer opportunities, no money is being offered and that's made very clear. People volunteer because they want to do something, or feel like it needs to be done. That's what volunteering is, that's the opportunity that's on the table, this website lists those opportunities.
- giantg2 3y agoThose last 2 are just business as usual for anybody who already lives in those area.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Quite a few of these "opportunities" are asking a LOT of volunteers, implicitly asking for unpaid labor. Its not implicit, "volunteer" is the word for a non-coerced unpaid laborer.
- efd6821b 3y agoDon't worry about it, son; you're not the kind that the National Park Service nor Search and Rescue is looking for.
- michaelmrose 3y agoIt's asking a lot because the vast majority of folks can't not work unless they also want to stop eating or become homeless after the end of the season not because they implicitly lack the commitment. It's also unpaid labor for a government with a 6 trillion dollar budget. Most of the old folks retiring at 70 aren't doing any of these labor intensive affairs so its mostly a task for the idle children of the upper middle class to rich. Are we feting people for being born on third base again?
- Rebelgecko 3y agoMost of the volunteer SAR people around me are still able to have full time jobs.
- arrakeenrevived 3y agoThis posting isn't for SAR, which typically requires specialized skills and the time commitment is different. This is for _Preventative_ SAR aka PSAR, which basically means just being physically present on trails to give people guidance, direction, and education about how to not get into dangerous situations. The time commitment for PSAR can be greater.
- ourmandave 3y agoAh, you're looking for USA Jobs.gov. https://www.usajobs.gov/ https://www.usajobs.gov/
- l33t7332273 3y agoIsn’t asking for volunteers _explicitly_ asking for unpaid labor?