Why volunteer? Some thoughts ahead of the Swansea IPC Athletics European Championships
The IPC Athletics European Championships will be held in Swansea this August.
The South Wales Evening Post asked me to put some thoughts together on 'volunteering'.
Here is what I wrote for them . . .
Robert Lloyd is a media consultant based in Carmarthen and Llanelli. He is a former editor of the Carmarthen Journal and Llanelli Star and former deputy editor of the South Wales Evening Post.
Why volunteer?
If you have to ask yourself the question, then volunteering may not be for you.
The simple answer is that the cost (in time, money and effort) is easily outweighed by the benefit (the feel-good factor of ‘putting something back’ into society, opportunities for new friendships and some life-changing and hugely memorable experiences).
Some people ‘get it’. Some don’t. If you get it, you’ll know what I mean.
Volunteering is now part of my DNA – whether it is helping the Llanelli Talking Newspaper for the Blind, doing meals on wheels, driving the Friday night Gateway Club bus, helping the local fun run or lending a hand with some local charitable causes.
The 2014 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics European Championships in Swansea in August provides a heaven-sent opportunity for ‘volunteers’.
The experience of being involved in a major sporting event is gold-dust for the volunteer.
I was lucky enough to be one of the ‘Games Makers’ at the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Most of my ‘Summer of 2012’ was spent in London. It was the experience of a lifetime.
The challenging interview and training process and the cost of finding bed and board in London probably put off many volunteers. But those who made it through to wear the distinctive Games Maker uniform will all testify to what a rich ‘life experience’ it was.
My role was with the Olympic News Service (ONS) and the Paralympic News Services (PNS), the official ‘news agencies’ for the Games.
En route to London, we’d received training in being Games ambassadors, a little bit of sign language and instructions on the ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ for interviewing Paralympic athletes.
My ‘job title’ was ‘Flash Quotes Reporter’ . . . ‘Flash’ being more along the lines of ‘newsflash’ than any dress code, ‘Quotes’ being the obvious instruction to record the spoken word and ‘Reporter’ . . . well, after more than 30 years at the newsroom ‘coalface’, I already knew a bit about that role.
In short, the job was to interview athletes immediately (and I mean immediately; those breathless spit and sweat moments) after competition. As a sideshow, we attended press conferences sometimes before and after key events and were given a general brief to grab quotes/stories from anyone ‘newsworthy’ on our travels around the Olympic venues.
In my way case, ‘newsworthy’ included Prime Minister David Cameron, the comedian Eddie Izzard, the runner Rosa Mota and the cyclist Eddy Merckx (among others).
You can smile and ponder what a dinner guest list that would make, but it was no laughing matter for the Flash Quotes Reporter. The professionalism of the ‘news service’ was always high on the agenda. Expectations were high – to deliver accurate, high quality, high news value quotes into the news service web-based portal.
We had targets. The simplest was to get your quotes and story into the computer system within 15 minutes of interviewing an athlete. We quickly realised that there was a reason Games Makers had been given ‘trainers’ to wear. You needed to be quick on your feet to get to the nearest computer station to file your copy.
For the Paralympics, my office was in the main Olympic Stadium, just down the main tunnel from the track finishing line. Shifts were sometimes 12 hours (on occasion we doubled up for the fun of it) with a team of eight journalists (drawn from lots of different nationalities) all working to one goal – providing news copy to feed the Paralympic News Service web portal, an intranet site provided as a service to all working journalists at the Games.
The PNS worked on a ‘catch-all’ principle. We’d get the stories from the medalists, some ‘hard luck’ cases and as many human interest stories as possible – and upload them as quickly as possible.
There may have been 20,000 journalists at the Games, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once. Jack Gallagher of the Japan Times and Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times could relax (a little) in the knowledge that if they couldn’t make it into the stadium they could rely on the PNS service to serve up newsworthy copy.
And, of course, part of the joy of doing the Flash Quotes Reporter job was seeing your quotes in the following day’s cuttings from the Japan Times, Los Angeles Times and other assorted newspaper, broadcast and web-based media.
Even better was being featured in the daily Games Maker newsletter bulletin and winning the ‘quote of the day’ prize.
The experience of being on the ‘inside track’ (literally) at the Games was one I will cherish for the rest of my life. Heck, I even ran the 400 metres around the Olympic track (during a lunchbreak). My time, I confess, wasn’t recorded!
An average day would see us reporting for duty at 7am to do research homework on the ‘athletes of the day’. At 9.45am, we’d open the tunnel door and step out trackside in a stadium containing 80,000 people – it was one of those ‘hairs on the back of the neck’ moments.
What were the highlights?
- Being in the stadium on ‘Thriller Thursday’, the day Hannah Cockcroft, David Weir and Jonnie Peacock won gold. The ‘Peacock, Peacock’ chant was mind-blowing. Interviewing the trio was a massive thrill.
- Being in the media scrum when South Africa’s blade-runner Oscar Pistorius opened up on another of his whinges.
- Just ‘being there’ for the duration of the Games and being able to play a small part in something massive.
We were always keenly aware that we were in a privileged position, getting to speak to supreme, ‘elite’ athletes at a time when emotions were running off the chart.
As life-experiences go, you’d find it hard to beat it. Would I recommend volunteering at the IPC Athletics European Championships in Swansea? If you don’t know the answer, then you haven’t been paying attention! Yes!
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