What does community mean to you?
Murray | Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Murray, a volunteer at Everybody Eats, shares how connecting with people from all walks of life can shape you.
“Everybody Eats services people that have got no money. And that’s a really good thing to do. I’m here every Tuesday afternoon and sometimes they put out a message saying ‘we need volunteers’ on another day and sometimes I volunteer.
The other volunteers, some of them have become good friends of mine. It’s taught a bit about who I am, and the fact that some of the people that come with no money, I sit next to them and talk to them and I really appreciate their hard stories. You learn to relate to people of every part of society effectively. And then other people you meet, you just don’t know where they’ve come from. And so you just get chatting to them and it’s just so interesting.
There’s new people arriving every week and it’s just great hearing their stories. And likewise them hearing my story.
Probably the biggest community feeling I got was when we volunteered with VSA (Volunteer Service Abroad) in Vanuatu for two years, between 2015 and 2017. That was probably the best experience of my life. They discovered I took photos and so I was so busy for two years. It was unbelievable.
Photographing all sorts of things for UN Women and for VSA New Zealand. If you go in and respect the people, you are much more likely to get them respecting you. It was probably one of the biggest adventures I’ve ever been on in my life.
People live with nothing, none of the trappings that we have in New Zealand and yet are happy with it. And you realise, actually, do you need all this stuff? And obviously they’re living in a tropical environment and it’s warmer but material possessions, we came back from Vanuatu and we just got rid of all our stuff. Pushed it out the door because we realised we can operate on a lot less stuff. So that was just an amazing experience.
And it taught me the power of volunteering. And then Everybody Eats was just a great place to volunteer to. The impact that it’s had on me, it makes me feel like a better person or a better version of me effectively doing this volunteering. And I recommend everybody does it, because it empowers you effectively, to be a better person.”
