Viva Volunteering
Heading into the home stretch narrows our focus towards the finish line. As final year students nearing the end of our time at university, we’re constantly reminded that a world of opportunity waits to greet us upon qualification. But this is also a time ripe for reflection. Years have passed and leaping forward to unattained future possibilities risks overlooking what has brought each one of us up to this point. Recently I’ve been thinking about the people, places and experiences that have nurtured my growth throughout dental school. Pulling it all together, a common thread comes to the forefront, having shaped not only the dental student I’ve come to be, but also the identity I’ve come to inhabit. This impact has been made by volunteering.
Not A ‘One Size Fits All’
While volunteering is not a one-size-fits-all affair, there is absolutely something for everyone. Dentistry is not immune to assertions that the standard five years currently mandated for the course is capable of being condensed. But the flipside of a longer duration is the greater scope for experimentation, saying yes to new opportunities, all the while learning more about yourself and the others around you. This extends to being able to shop around for a type of volunteering that suits you. Turning to examine the Student Union’s volunteering service, three different streams of volunteering are on offer. Like most overexuberant first years, dazzled by this array of choice that only fanned the fire of eager enthusiasm, I of course got involved with everything.
The ‘Give Volunteering A Go’ scheme, originally branded as ‘One Day Volunteering’, does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a perfectly succinct taster for those looking to dip their toes into volunteering and try something new. For me, this was followed by a wholehearted excitement to dive in headfirst. But I was certainly not alone in this. As a team leader alongside other Volunteering Champions, it was lovely to see familiar faces of returning students who had caught the volunteering bug after tentatively signing up for one-off expeditions. This was particularly evident amongst the groups who took on the famed Whitechapel Mission Breakfast Challenge. Despite the ‘challenge’ portion of the opportunity being fulfilled by the pre-sunrise 5AM start, the time just flies from the moment you begin preparing, cooking and serving a hot breakfast to the Mission’s homeless service users. But this is definitely not an ordinary cereal plus milk equals breakfast equation. A full English with all the trimmings is in order; tallying the eggs fried up each morning hovers around the one hundred mark. Either it’s something in the oil fumes or the early morning delirium, but all the volunteers are always keen to return for more of that helper’s high. This is just one of the many activities that would have never crossed my mind to try if it wasn’t for ‘Give Volunteering A Go’. Over the years, other expeditions have ranged from stewarding at the Royal Albert Hall Alternative Hair Show to shimmying down through Chinatown dressed up as zodiac mascots on Chinese New Year.
Maybe the practice of physically flicking through pages of an Argos catalogue to highlight items for one’s wishlist has been made obsolete by migration to online spaces. But a similar breadth of choice is provided by exploring the External Partner Organisations volunteering stream, only enhanced by the ability to fine-tune searches using filters to suit your preferences. Established links with charity and non-profit partners offering volunteering opportunities all year round enables a one-click system to easily register interest in an opportunity. With a fondness for working with the elderly, I applied to volunteer with the Newham Good Neighbours scheme via the SU volunteering catalogue. My weekly visits to an elderly lady with early-stage dementia weren’t extravagant. Most afternoons we would pop the kettle on, make a cup of tea and chat for a few hours. She lived alone and didn’t have any other visitors apart from her family once in a while. Although one-off or short term opportunities are fantastic for getting a feel for the volunteering scene, there’s something palpably different to showing up regularly over an extended period of time. There were often times when I was tired. And admittedly occasions when I simply felt not bothered. But making a consistent effort knowing that someone is counting on you is invaluable for building character. Not to mention the sizeable impact on and the role you may come to occupy in another individual’s everyday life.
Searching for other longer term opportunities led me to engage with student-led volunteering groups. After learning more about each group – and being left rather in awe of how much passion and generosity there was in student efforts to make positive changes in the community – helping out with piano-accompanied singing sessions for the elderly sounded quite appealing. Since my off-key warbling added nothing to the dulcet tones of the regulars, I was relieved to find that the group of BL students who visited Toynbee Hall in Aldgate on Wednesday afternoons also ran other events for the day centre visitors. This collaboration forms part of the Griffin Community Trust, a pioneering community project that has brought together BL medical and dental students and local residents in London’s East End. From the befriending scheme to event organisation for Shaftsbury Lodge residents and Toynbee Hall, the Griffin Community Trust is an amazing project I feel so grateful to have been a part of (and will continue to be a part of) until my very last day as a dental student.
Activation Energy
From our home base in Whitechapel, we serve patients in a high needs area. Tower Hamlets is the tenth most deprived borough in the country, with a highly diverse population. 43% of children live in poverty (Trust For London, 2019), a higher proportion than anywhere else in England, yet the prevalence of childhood obesity remains high; around two fifths of children are overweight or obese at the end of primary school (Tower Hamlets Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, 2016). Tooth decay is preventable, yet it has been experienced by 31% of 5-year-olds in Tower Hamlets. This soars above the London (26%) and national (23%) average (Public Health England Oral Health Survey of Five-Year-Old Children, 2017). Now although I did not apply to dental school in response to a dramatic innate calling to change lives, I did hope to make somewhat of a difference through whatever vocation I chose to pursue. Spotlighted by these startling statistics, the local health picture was pretty bleak. It was inevitable that the wave of optimism on which I surfed into dental school would sooner or later be confronted with the cliff face of social inequality and the practical remit of what students can actually achieve in the community, even as future health professionals. Volunteering provided a concrete outlet to make a contribution in whatever way I could. During pre-clinical years devoid of that prospectus-promised ‘early patient contact’, involvement in volunteering provided much needed motivation. As students, it is all too easy to question our individual reach, but seeing the collective impact made by all the different opportunities to interact with vulnerable groups spurred my efforts.
Going ‘all in’ with volunteering helped temper my impatience. Still building the knowledge base necessary to be beneficial to others in a dental capacity, I wanted to run before I could walk. Likening my initial fervour to scrabbling around desperately for a drop of a water in a desert dry of clinical experience, the latter half of my course saw a rationing of these water stores. After gaining greater insight into what skills I could actually bring to the table to address local problems, it was time to make more selective, measured choices as to how I directed my energies. University life comprises a fine balancing act of spinning what can sometimes feel like a million and one plates. On top of studies, looking after one’s health, part time work, taking on extra research projects, throwing volunteering into the ring risks disturbing any equilibrium. So while there are numerous benefits to volunteering, it is equally important to recognise that not everyone can give up the time to do so. Furthermore, given the typically limited student budget, any spare time (a resource already made scarce by the intensity of studying required for medical and dental courses) may not be able to be given up for free. It boils down to being realistic about one’s priorities. Volunteering must sometimes give way to other commitments. Improving my time management remains an ongoing project. But when encountering tough patches at dental school, all the times spent volunteering have only served as heartening and helpful reminders as to why I embarked on this path in the first place.
Volunteering By-Products: Unexpected Treasures
The by-products from volunteering should not be underestimated. It turned out that by participating in completely non-dental-related volunteering, I had inadvertently developed transferable skills aplenty when it came to my own patient encounters, even in settings outside of dental school. Volunteering with the Crisis at Christmas dental team, students were assigned the responsibility of coordinating the dental reception area. Drawing on the arsenal of seemingly unrelated skills I had developed through prior volunteering experiences – administrative planning, chatting with waiting guests over a few games of chess or cards, making numerous cups of tea – I confidently felt that I could contribute to transforming the first area patients encountered from an anxiety-filled purgatory between initial clerking and seeing the dentist, into a more welcoming and compassionate space.
In the midst of my clinical years, the chance to apply a specifically dental-oriented community effort came in the form of collaboration. An oral health promotion day at the Sir Ludwig Guttman Centre, a polyclinic at which one of our dental outreach centres was located, had been organised by Debra Chow, a fellow dental student. To avoid breaching student scope of practice, oral health advice was the task at hand. Nevertheless, the event was exceptionally popular with student volunteers and stall visitors alike. Seeing a need for dentally-specific volunteering opportunities, Barts Community Smiles was formed with the aim to raise oral health awareness and deliver basic oral health promotion. What started out as a small idea grew organically into something much bigger. The group trained and brought together dental students across all years to deliver activities in a variety of settings, including engagement with QMUL Festival of Communities, Action On Sugar, and local primary schools involved in the SugarSmart Tower Hamlets Healthy Schools programme, reaching a total of over 2,000 members of public. The rate at which we were able to create something from the ground up was very much accelerated by collaboration. Teddy Bear Hospital, a group that runs interactive clinics in primary schools to both educate children on healthy habits and familiarise the experience of visiting doctors and dentists, were so generous and open to Barts Community Smiles bringing oral health activities to their annual Safety Day event and 2019 Teddy Bear Hospital National Conference. Establishing Barts Community Smiles not only provided valuable opportunities for dental students to become oral health champions in their own communities, but was also a tangible way of tackling oral health inequalities. Our attempt to action positive change locally has hopefully helped to catalyse a future oral health workforce passionate about alleviating barriers to dental care.
It’s The People
Motivated by the work carried out by the Whitechapel Mission, I volunteered at the GrowTH night shelter this past winter, spending more time with guests who were homeless and learning about their lives. Every encounter reemphasised that everyone comes with a story. Community is formed by people from all walks of life. The realisation that we are all more similar than we are different has been an instrumental guiding star in navigating the road to becoming a healthcare professional truly capable of empathy for one’s patients. I definitely attribute my most memorable volunteering opportunities to the interesting and inspiring people I’ve met through them. Spending Christmas with other volunteers providing dental care to Crisis centre guests has been the most heart-warming way I’ve passed the holidays yet. Regardless of the weather outside, every early hour welcome to the Whitechapel Mission involves being enveloped in warmth that radiates not from the ovens but from the bright and cheerful staff. And whether it’s over the course of leading a student volunteering group or a single Sunday morning getting their deep fry-on, it is especially uplifting to see other students blossom in their volunteering experiences.
Inspired by all the students rising to address formidable challenges in the community, I took on the role of BLSA Volunteering Officer. As well as the continuation of annual events such as the Health Volunteer Fair, my term was spent introducing a cross-campus Volunteering Week to recognise and celebrate student contributions to the community. This was in hopes that by doing so, others could similarly be inspired and mobilised to get involved. Competition doesn’t really feature in the realm of volunteering, but if there was a prize for the most encompassing student engagement stream, volunteering would be a sure winner. Of all the ways that students can get involved, volunteering has its fingers in the most pies, being an activity that easily feeds into anything and everything. It has been so encouraging to see successive officers working closely with Societies and Sports, many of whom have rallied their group members to volunteer and champion their own community causes. I wait with a sort of excited anticipation for the prospect of fresh perspective having read the manifestos of this year’s candidates for the role.
A Launchpad
Detailing reams of extracurriculars to justify the self-bestowed ‘keen volunteer’ descriptor in my personal statement for applying to dental school, I will admit to having been guilty of opportunistic resume building. But reflecting on the people I’ve met and the life skills I’ve learned through volunteering, I’ve come to genuinely appreciate the power of helping others, teamworking towards a greater cause and making authentic connections. Attending lectures and clinics form the solid bread and butter foundation of dental school. However, so many chance encounters have come about from being open-minded to trying completely new and different things. Through Griffin Community Trust accommodation, I have met wonderful flatmates who make everyday a joy. When finding our feet in setting up Barts Community Smiles, supportive tutors became inspiring mentors for making a difference in the health community.
From presenting a key that helped unlock the gates to dental school, volunteering has evolved to become a meaningful fixture in my life. However big or small, each and every time I have volunteered has played some part, almost imperceptibly, in moulding my personal and professional development. It has been a series of stepping stones that I am certain will continue to steer my direction beyond university. To where it leads, I can’t quite see, but if it’s anywhere near half as good as my time at Barts and The London, I’m excited to see what’s in store.
