Are Working Bees A Thing Of The Past?

[Ashore]

A lot of people are time crunched,

This is a huge factor , though I always found time as did a lot of others 30 odd years ago , but times have changed as has work loads.

Perhaps a lot of this publiic liability stuff that has been doing the rounds could be scarying them off as well.

Another case of political correctness gone mad, I doubt if the playground equipment I helped build and design for the daughters kindergarten would be allowed now ,

At one end of the spectrum you will always have the few genuine willing helpers and at the other end you always have a few genuine ar# who think the world owes them a living.

When my daughters were as high school We were on the P & F and orginized among other things school dances , the principal and one or two teachers would attend , the rest wouldn't cause it was after hours and they didn't get paid for these sort of activities, that I could understand but the no of parents that would drop off their kids and if asked if they could stop for even a half hour to help with the carpark etc would get most indignant as they had plans for that night dinner etc , were always the same ones that showed up late to pick up their kids , (which meant you had to stay back until they did), after our youngest daughter finished school we were still involved with the school through friends we had made there but within 3 years all the dances were finished along with the working bees etc.


But to answer the original question If there were no more working Bee's there wouldn't be any honey

[The Bleeder]

SN,

Are they dead? Slowly dying I think. I was on the commitee of a daycare centre and it was the same faces that turned up to the working bees. These same faces put in the hours of 9am till about 5pm and sometimes longer. Even when a BBQ was organised the attenance wasn't that great. In the end I ended up taking things home to repair/paint all the time (7 years of this) as there was not enough of us or time to get it all done.

The reason I did it was the kids (all of them) deserve to have a nice environment to be taken care of in regardless of whether their parent/s turned up.

Eventually the attendance at the working bees picked up a little when the kids starting telling their parents what so and so's daddy did on the working bee (that took a long time) and pointed it out.

It wasn't until my son left that daycare centre (my daughter was there for 4 years before him) that one parent asked who was going to do all the things I did since I wasn't going to be there.

And now, it's back to the way it used to be (same faces but noone to do the repairs). I know this as the Director of the centre called and asked if I could repair and paint some of the bookcases and other things.

It seems that some people just don't give a s&*t if some else is going to do it.

I was glad I did it (I really did enjoy it) and gave up bitching about the lack of attendance after a few years.


Steve

[journeyman Mick]

Not quite working bees, but still on the subject of volunteers. I'm in our local rural fire brigade and we've had a few members leave over the last 5 years but have attracted less new members than the ones we've lost. I can see a time coming when we simply won't be able to respond to a fire due to lack of members.

Mick