Legacy
Legacy
Please note: this post is 101 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only
Hanging out with her older neighbours through North London Cares gave volunteer Rebecca a new sense of purpose and pride – so she made a career change and joined our team full time! In her first blog as Projects Officer for our social clubs, Rebecca reflects on the things that brought her here...
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Like many people, I've spent the majority of my 20s trying to work out what I wanted to do, and how to shape my work life. I was always looking for the next best thing, dangerously flirting with the idea of the grass always being greener, yet it never quite working out that way.
If you'd asked me what I was looking for, it would always be the free lunches, the yearly bonus, the shopping discounts, and the wild Christmas parties. But after a few years, these things weren't enough to to keep me motivated day-to-day. They seemed less and less relevant. I started to feel disheartened, with a niggling doubt in my mind that it all just wasn't enough for me.
I’d never been a big career planner – I just sort of fell into things and gave them a go. For a while it worked and I was having fun, but then I started realising that the closer I edged towards thirty, the further I seemed to be moving away from what I thought my work life would and should be.
I knew I had to make a change for myself, but I wasn't sure which way to go. I flipped through pages of evening classes and took a plethora of career and personality quizzes. I bored everyone I know by endlessly asking them what they thought I should do. I made lists of what I wanted to change and still I couldn’t find what it actually was that I should be aiming for.
When I discovered North London Cares in October 2015 I threw myself into volunteering for a variety of reasons – one of the major ones being that I always walked away feeling really positive, something which I wasn't getting from Monday to Friday (instead collapsing each night on the sofa with a glass of wine, ranting and complaining about my day).
However, I would always leave North London Cares' social clubs with my held high, and with a smile on my face. I’d speak to people at the bus stop, which for a Londoner is kind of a big deal. I didn't feel tired or flat – instead I felt rejuvenated, like someone had pressed a reset button on my whole attitude to life. With each club I discovered a newfound confidence within me, of course accompanied with a side of tea and chatter amongst our friendly neighbours.
So when I saw a few months ago that North London Cares were searching for a full time Projects Officer, I jumped at the opportunity – and then physically jumped around central London, crying and screaming down the phone to my Mum when I got the job. I couldn’t believe that I was finally about to make the career change I had been blindly searching for all this time. What is so unbelievably clear to me now is that without my journey into volunteering, I don’t know if I would ever have realised what it was I was good at and what I could be doing.
This has been my first week officially working at North London Cares, as my day job, as a new Projects Officer on the team. I've been shadowing my new colleagues Mike and Indie, getting to know the ropes, and meeting as many neighbours as possible. Thanks to my existing Love Your Neighbour match, Ethel, who I’ve been friends with a good few months now, I already have a group of cheerleaders cheering me along as I dive head first into my first few days on the job – Ethel told most of Kentish Town about my role before I had a chance to!
I've spent the week mastering a new recipe with the guys at Abbey Road, watching a film with neighbours and volunteers in Cally Road, sampling Greek food with new friends in Kentish Town and hosting a quiz for north Londoners seven decades apart in King’s Cross. In between clubs I've been (attempting) to master the organisation and admin behind the scenes of the social clubs and trying get to grips with my newly varied day-to-day.
Am I tired? Absolutely! Am I happy? Well, I get to spend my days working with the brilliant (and patient, thanks everyone) team at North London Cares and with our vibrant north London neighbours... and I think if you've read this far, you’ll know the answer to that question is a resounding ‘YES’.