volunteering - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

In the pandemic a national database of volunteers opened up, one in which you could enter your skills, availability and if you believed yourself yet immune to the virus. From there life began to become more orderly again.

Volunteering in the pandemic was my daily exercise, riding my bike, delivering prescriptions and much needed supplies to the vulnerable. Being out in that sunshine and doing good for community all at once, it doesn't get much better than that!

While we’re on the way I thought I’d run some volunteer work ideas past you that we could do together. The first one is that we sit in a cubicle farm all day while being gossiped about, drinking bad coffee and watching pot plants die. Sounds like fun, yeah? What did you say? No way? OK, maybe that wouldn’t be fun, would you want money to do that? Hmmm, well all these volunteer jobs are at my Father’s house (He’s the boss there, but only because we love Him so much) and we don’t have money, no-one does. So we’ll need to find something else for us to do there. I know, we could join the teams tearing up the Arctic for oil, we get to destroy loads of pristine habitat. Would you like to do that? You asked if there’s money in it? No. Wanna do it just for kicks? Don’t look at me like that, I was told this is the sort of thing you guys did. Anyway, it was another one of my “little jokes,” we respect the environment at Father’s house. Okay, okay. How about we get a pig and make a pen for it so small it can’t move, that way it’ll get fatter on less grain. Wanna do that? Did you ask if there was money in it or was that the sound of bile rising in your throat? I’m not sure, you’re looking a bit sickly right now, mumbling. Well, no. There is no money there, we have enough grain and because of the way we build and organise, there is no land shortage. So wanna make that cage? I mean prison? I mean pen? It’s a nice pig actually, smarter than my dog, likes her belly scratched. I call her Lola. She has these bright eyes that sparkle brighter when she sees a mud patch.

Or we could enjoy an afternoon replanting trees, or reading to the kids down at the school cooperative. Sounds more like what you want to do, right? Funny that, once the money is gone everyone wants to do the ethical and feel good jobs. How will we ever get those oil spills achieved? How will we ever manage to pollute the oceans and make mountains of plastic junk? Oh, wait, we didn’t want to do all of that anyway…

When all the office workers went home, there was all this space in the city centre. And as the virus waned we turned some into a new thriving arts scene, a place to get out all of the hurt of those tough months we'd suffered. The music was incredible. Other places became new digs for the homeless with volunteer support, that next winter after the pandemic start was the first with every citizen in a warm bed and well fed. I guess we had learned the big lesson, that the health of one is the health of us all, that we really are all connected.