Celebrating our Volunteers during Welsh Charities Week

SAFE couldn’t do what we do without the help of passionate volunteers.

They help us to set up and run festivals and other events. They make coffees and work in our Cardiff based Ethical Boutiques. They create beautiful designs for our promotional materials and they even wrote the words you’re reading right now.

As it is Welsh Charity Week, we’d like to say a huge thank you to all our lovely volunteers for their crucial contributions. Without volunteers there would be no Welsh Charity Week to celebrate! It’s thanks to them that SAFE is able to raise the funds necessary for our various projects which enrich the lives of disadvantaged people both here in the UK and overseas.

We are all part of a global community. As John Donne said; “No Man Is An Island.”

What impacts one person will affect those around them, and they in turn will go on to affect others. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a storm halfway round the world.

A disaster for one community can have worldwide repercussions; economically, ecologically and emotionally. A chain-reaction of negativity. 

But the opposite also holds true; that positive works can cause a benevolent reaction in the world.

A person volunteers their time to help run a fundraising event.

They’re serving drinks and they’re having a nice chat with anyone who fancies a natter. 

One person seems to be really struggling. The volunteer asks a simple question; “are you okay” and they listen to the response, and they offer genuine empathy and kind words.

The next event rolls around and the volunteer is there again.

But right there beside them is the very same person they met before, volunteering their own time to help others.

The funds they raise go on to help deliver Sustainable Livelihood Skills training for a village in India. People from a community that have traditionally been excluded from society get the opportunity and tools to learn tailoring skills and make a living for themselves.

They can feed themselves, feed their family. Their children grow up healthy and with opportunities those who became before them never had and they in turn build a better world for those who will become after.

A single small act of kindness in Cardiff has a positive impact halfway round the world. A holistic society.

The butterfly effect.

Each volunteer is a butterfly flapping their wings. They cause a storm not of devastation, but of change. A flap of your wing helps to blow away poverty, inequality, and suffering.

Sounds like a twee exaggeration, right? But the key word there is “helps” because there is no beach without each single grain of sand and there are no constellations without each individual star.

So if you’re already a volunteer then thank-you deeply from the bottom of my heart, you individual star.

And if you’re not, then why not give it a go? Just one day, just one hour, may make all the difference in the world.

Huge thanks to Cel & Megan for this beautiful blog!