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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • Yes, definitely. Why you are doing it makes all the difference.

    There is - in my experience - a good deal of how you - and the organisation in general - do it too, and that accounts for much of the cultural difference. Charities tend to treat staff (and volunteers - since so many depend on vols) as people rather that resources much more, although there is also a tendency for the cause to outweigh everything, which can lead to staff, particularly, being expected to commit totally around the clock, and sidelined if they don’t. I have only encountered a few organisations that do this to a problematic extent really though.


  • I did in my late 20s after working in IT. I didn’t know what I wanted and wasn’t planning on non-profit or anything as such, but jumped ship, did a range of random things before spending some time volunteering (at something that was not in any way IT related)- which was the critical thing. That put me in a spot to A) show some commitment and B) get some training as it was offered. A paid post followed in due course after that.

    That is a very simplified version, but volunteering was definitely the critical element for me.

    Since then, I met plenty of other people who made the jump. Some simply moved with their existing skills to an equivalent role in a charity - and there are plenty that need project management skills - whilst others have taken the same route as me and spent some time volunteering.

    Volunteering means you don’t get paid for some time, of course, so you have to either live off savings and/or find a live-in role and/or work part-time or something and you probably need to downsize one way or another, but people find a way and make it work.

    Of course once you are in a role with your chosen cause, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be away from being overworked, stressed and given more and more responsibility. It is a trope that working for a charity means that you don’t do it for the money and you work waaay longer than the official hours say.

    Certainly my role at the moment, with a large charity, is the most demanding I have ever had and there is basically nothing left at the end of the month for savings: I am just keeping afloat. For all that though, there is no way at all that I would go back to a for-profit role, and I have never looked back for a moment. The culture is totally different and leagues better.

































  • The Romans had an impact to a greater or lesser degree across the whole of the area that they controlled in Great Britain, including Cornwall and Wales, but the Brythonic (Celtic) culture seems to survive for most ordinary people throughout that time. It was really only the arrival of the Germanic peoples - the Angles and Saxons - that seemed to displace the Brythonic language and culture from much of the lands that they went on to occupy, which was largely the land that was easier to work in the majority of England, but not the more difficult land in the West and North - including Cornwall and Wales.

    Around that time, there is evidence that some Brythonic speakers were moving into Wales - presumably from England - causing changes to the existing dialects there, also some Britons seem to have migrated to Brittany on the continent, and there was an outbreak of plague that affected much of the Roman lands and caused a population decline there - but less so among the Germanic people.

    No matter which had more effect, it was the Germanic people and culture that displaced the existing one - not the Romans.