It's Not Rubbish?

I've been spending this week in Belfast working on an independent project. Each volunteer is allowed 5 days to go work somewhere else to experience another similar organisation. We call it our initiative week, because it's up to ourselves to take the initiative to plan our week away. My initiative week is slightly different than most. I am working with one of our programme staff members, so I'm not with a different organisation. I am in the process of evaluating a cross-community women's project that was carried out over the course of a year. Because I'm working with/for someone who already knows me, she trusts me to do the evaluation on my own. Other organisations that I talked to didn't think that 5 days would be enough time to truly get to know their organisations, which means they didn't think I would really be able to do them any good in just 5 days. I understand. This way, I get to do a type of project that is closer to the type of thing I studied at university. This is the type of thing I think I might like to do for a living, so I'm pretty chuffed. It's going well so far, and I hope to write up a decent report that will help develop the programme as well as my skills.

While I'm in Belfast, I'm also taking advantage of all the city has to offer. So I hung out in the city centre and visited the 'Waste. It's not rubbish.' festival all about recycling. It was pretty cool, really. And they had a huge art piece on the city hall lawn. It make syou think about what you throw away in your lifetime. And before I came to Belfast, I caught a gorgeous sunset in Ballycastle.

After school lessons

Guess the age of the group I worked with this week.
We asked for volunteers to help with dishes for each meal, and each time, our ‘volunteers’ disappeared after about 5 minutes. We organized a few activities like quizzes and bingo, but they weren’t really interested in playing the games once they realized that there were sweeties involved. They just wanted the sweeties. During the evening activities, a few of them were exhausted but didn’t want to go to bed and miss out on the fun, so they fell asleep in the main lounge with all the loud music going on around them. They were painfully and hilariously honest about everything the entire week. Any guesses? Primary school? Teenagers? Nope, senior citizens! All week they reminded me of children in mostly good ways. But they were really sweet, and I learned so much from them.
Our 30 little old ladies and our 2 little old men were from two different community projects—one Catholic and one Protestant. They actually only came up together by accident. Both groups wanted to come here, but one of the groups couldn’t find their own week to stay in the main house. Instead, we offered to let them share the main house with another small senior citizen group. The two groups conferred and agreed to share. One group was very quiet and reserved and sipped tea like dainty and polite senior citizens. The other group was described to me as ‘mad as hatters’ and fit the bill perfectly. They burst into the room and chattered the place up. They described themselves as ‘recycled teenagers’ which also fit them perfectly. The two groups were pretty different, but only in personality. By that, I mean the religious differences were a non-issue. Before the groups left on Friday morning, the two leaders met with our bookings administrator to book another week together for the next year. They had such a good time together they want to do it again! In my book, that’s a success.
They absolutely loved their volunteers, or as they called us, ‘the girls.’ One of the volunteers, Ochanya, is getting married in a month, and so they all got together and got her a present and a card signed by all of them—both groups. They presented it, along with cards for all of the volunteers, at the dance they had on Thursday night. It was very touching.
I would have to admit that I was a bit nervous before the group arrived. I had never worked with a senior citizens group before, and I didn’t know what to expect. I can entertain primary school children all day long with games and songs that come like second nature by now. But senior citizens aren’t quite as enamored by a giant parachute or songs about yodeling Austrians. So what do you do? Well, I learned. You have quizzes, play bingo, let them go for walks, book buses to take them shopping, play with clay, do foot massages, hold dances, and have sing-a-longs. And of course you have tea and scones at regular intervals. Most importantly, you sit with your cup of tea and your scone and you talk to them and listen to them.