The Selfish Altruist
By Refugee Support Europe
The Selfish AltruistFeb 19, 2024
S2 E13. Paul Hutchings: The ultimate Selfish Altruist
As Refugee Support undergoes a change in leadership with the appointment of a new CEO, we bid a heartfelt farewell to our co-founder and departing Chief Executive, Paul Hutchings. Together with John Sloan, Paul established the organization in 2016, offering a platform for proactive engagement to numerous individuals in the UK, Europe, and beyond. These individuals were deeply moved and frustrated by governmental shortcomings in safeguarding refugees amidst the escalating war in Syria.
In this concluding episode of Season 2, Paul, typically the interviewer, takes on the role of interviewee as he engages in a conversation with Rachel Ellis, the newly appointed Chief Executive of Refugee Support Europe.
S2 E12. Joe and Tasha: Volunteering is our holiday
Joe and Tasha have done a lot of travelling and a lot of volunteering. Those used to be separate activities.
Now they actively seek out volunteering opportunities when they have some time off to travel. They see somewhere new, do something good, meet great people and have more enriching experiences together.
Some 'voluntourism' is rightly criticised for milking travellers, exploiting host communities and feeding white saviour narratives but choose the right place to help with the right organisation (like Refugee Support) and it's a massive win for everyone.
S2 E11. Sophia Burton: Changing minds on migration
As volunteers, we want to know how to change people's minds. But the road to changing minds about migration is a challenging one.
As the co-founder of Migration Matters, Sophia and her team are challenging the sensationalized narratives around the so-called refugee crisis while advocating for a more inclusive, research-based conversation.
We explore the role of evidence, stories, and appealing to people's values in advocacy work.
Balancing power while sharing stories is key, and so is countering biases with research and evidence.
With educational video series, workshops, and dialogue events, Migration Matters are bridging the gap between the public and the scholars, offering evidence-based perspectives on the pressing issue of migration.
S2 E10. Maria Marga - Look after the basics!
Maria has been one of our Coordinators in Moldova and Cyprus for the last 5 months and we are very sorry to see her go!
She has been critical in helping our organisation do what it does and of course got a lot out of it herself. Working with us in Moldova was special because of her Moldvan heritage, and she enjoyed working in Cyprus as a forgotten hotspot where we can have a big impact. She has worked with well over 100 volunteers and learnt from all of them.
But what makes a great volunteer? The best ones are humble, offer ideas and get involved in whatever is useful at that time. Especially useful are people who can help with teamwork and group dynamics.
None of us should ashamed of enjoying their volunteering but we need to think about our motivations. We talk about why that is critical. Not only do we need to ask what we are taking from the experience, and we need to be very cautious about how much we are taking from the people we are supporting.
S2 E9. Bea - Using hope to make a difference
In this episode, Paul talks to our new (returning) trustee Bea about her personal journey and the challenges and benefits of volunteering. From volunteering in Greece, to being our first trustee, to a trustee for a community sponsorship scheme, to our trustee again, she highlights the positive impact volunteering has had on her and the communities she serves.
We also talk about the importance of maintaining hope and empathy towards those in need.
With a focus on balancing commitments and staying true to the cause, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone interested in making a positive difference in their community.
- Gain valuable insights to help you become a better volunteer and community member.
- Volunteering pros/cons, personal experiences
- Pros/cons of settling a refugee family
- Positive impact of community sponsorship, political activism
- Importance of maintaining hope/empathy
- Volunteering benefits for personal growth/society
- Selfish motivations behind altruism
S2 E8. Gerry - The power of community
Gerry is one of our Ambassadors and first volunteered with Refugee Support in 2019. He has returned every year since then to help out. Each time, it can take a couple of weeks to adjust back to normal life but after that he has a huge sense of positivity and a desire to continue.
He finds working with likeminded people, whatever their age, and getting things done extremely satisfying.
And volunteering with us isn’t all that Gerry does. He also serves as a volunteer on the board of a thriving local credit union and with his local church.
The most inspiring thing for us is the strength of Gerry’s community. He lives in a village in rural Ireland who have all got behind his volunteering. Together, they have raised an astonishing €100,000 over the last 4 years for Refugee Support.
Gerry and his community are an example to us all and show how helping others helps them.
S2 E7. Rosie Campbell - Listening is the best medicine
Rosie has been regularly volunteering for The Samaritans or 10 years. She shares with Paul a history in market research and thought that experience would make her good at being a Samaritan. She was surprised to discover that she needed to develop a whole new range of skills.
She gives us a fascinating insight into the Samaritan way of working and what it is like to be a Samaritan, a volunteering role she loves.
Listening to others about their lives has real power. It isn’t selfless. It’s insightful. The conversations she’s had have revealed important aspects about herself and about how she sees the world, particularly her own biases. And it’s sociable.
It’s so beneficial, you have to wonder if it is altruistic at all.
S2 E6. Mariam - Volunteering with Afghans was a massive wake up call
Mariam talks movingly and very honestly about her identity as a young woman from a displaced family and the journey that her volunteering set her on.
Her family are from Afghanistan. So while volunteering has always been a big part of her life, the emotional difficulties and rewards of volunteering in the Nicosia Dignity Centre took her by surprise. About 30% of the members there are refugees from Afghanistan.
As a Farsi speaker, Mariam spent a lot of time serving Afghans at the Centre. This forced her to confront her own privilege and the pain of people who she shares a culture and history with.
She really helped the Afghan members who were there. And they opened her eyes to a side of herself that she had been suppressing or unable to articulate.
S2 E5. Natasha - Volunteering helped me survive
Natasha, a Ukrainian ethnic Russian, was living in Odesa at the time of the invasion in February 2022 but left within a month to escape the air raids and be with her parents in Moldova.
Looking for a better life, she travelled to Austria with other Ukrainian families and found herself in Insbruck with food and shelter but without the things that give life meaning.
A born helper, well-travelled and a gifted, multi-lingual communicator, she played a key role with the group’s orientation, language learning and employment. This volunteering was difficult but also very satisfying. As she said, it “helped me to survive and not to get crazy”.
She is now living in Moldova and volunteering at the welcoming Chisinau Dignity Centre where she has found another fulfilling role, supporting people who have lost everything in a place that gives them so much.
By helping people like her, Natasha talks movingly about how she is helping herself. Please listen
S2 E4. Holly Penalver - Volunteers create and need support networks
Holly Penalver founded Indigo Volunteers 10 years ago to offer an ethical route for people who want to help.
Indigo has been one of our key partners since we were founded by providing us with our most important resource – volunteers! But Indigo is more than that – it is at the heart of a support network helping another 50 grass-roots organisations, across 10 countries and in total has supplied about 3,500 people.
We talk about what a huge missed opportunity it is that larger NGOs don’t use more volunteers. And what a beautiful thing it is for people to come together and enjoy volunteering. That should be something to celebrate!
But volunteering can be an isolating experience, it exposes your inability to help with everything and it can be extra tough when you return.
S2 E3 Natalie Holmes - Volunteering got me the jobs I love
Natalie has been volunteering for Refugee Support Europe for years. She has distributed food and hygiene products on Greek refugee camps, been a Volunteer Coordinator during an intense time of growth, walked through Europe, swam across lakes, spent 2 weeks painting a new Centre and is currently one of our Ambassadors.
Now she is working for us as our paid Fundraising Manager. It’s another volunteer journey that started out purely to help others but has ended up with her doing a job she loves for a cause she cares about.
S2 E2. Dan Ransom - Prosecuted for being a humanitarian
In January 2019, Dan was on a humanitarian mission in the Evros region of Greece when he was arrested for trespassing. What would normally be treated as a minor misdemeanour penalised with a warning or a fine quickly escalated into a ludicrous but very serious charge of espionage. He went on to spend 4 days in a police cell and had to leave the country with all his future plans in tatters.
Dan had been working for a year as our officially recognised Volunteer Coordinator at Katsikas refugee camp in Greece. Even when all the evidence of his purely humanitarian plans were presented to the prosecutor, it still went all the way to a farcical trial two years later where he was quickly found not guilty of all charges.
His case is not unique. Sarah Mardini who recently featured in the film The Swimmers, together with over 20 other humanitarians have just been tried in Lesvos for what Amnesty calls 'unfair, baseless charges'. And that has just ended in similarly farcical circumstances, with the courts now unlikely to convict them of any crime.
There can only be one explanation - that the Greek state has a deliberate policy of criminalising humanitarian workers in an attempt to disrupt, deter and intimidate them.
Well, it severely disrupted Dan, but it did not deter or intimidate him.
S2 E1. Pete Greenburg - Bringing back some balance
For the first episode of Selfish Altruist Season 2, Paul talks to Pete Greenburg, a former F-16 fighter pilot with the US Air Force. No longer in combat, he has just spent the last 6 months volunteering with humanitarian organisations in Ukraine, including two tours of duty with Refugee Support in Moldova.
Pete, like many volunteers, just felt compelled to help on the ground in Ukraine when the Russian army invaded in February. All his former colleagues have swapped flying in combat and now flying civil airlines so what was it about him thst led him down this path? He has always closely followed events in the region, he had the opportunity, and there was the encounter with a bald eagle….
But there is a deeper, more moving and deeply personal journey here about bringing some balance into his life.
There could hardly be a better example of what it means to be a Selfish Altruist.
08. Liz Bates: "I was angry at the geopolitical response"
Liz Bates is a Birmingham community doctor which means she brings a very special set of skills to her volunteering. Despite that, she found working in the chaos and madness of those refugee camps in Greece in 2016 incredibly tough.What do you do when you first arrive in that kind of situation where there is huge demand and very few resources?
We talk about the importance of just creating a sense of calm so that individuals can access their own inner resources and resilience.And how do you look after yourself in the face of such unrelenting and desperate human need?It is OK to take pride in your volunteering, to celebrate the successes and enjoy working with others.
It’s more than OK – it’s what keeps you going and protects you form burning out. It’s Practical Selfish Altruism.Liz has been a part of the Refugee Support family since working with us in Katiskas and Alexandreia refugee camps. Last year she took a more active role working with John to resettle in the UK a refugee family from South Sudan as part of our Birmingham Welcomes project.
07. Chris Goodson: Ukraine and Moldova, helping the helpers
Chris has volunteered 5 times and was instrumental in setting up our new operation in Moldova. We talk about how strange and frustrating it was to go and set something up but not actually distribute any aid. And how easy it is to share how you feel about the experienced with other volunteers but how hard it is to talk about to people on your return.
06. Ian McAuslane: "It's all about the people"
Ian has just returned from volunteering in Cyprus and that is now his 5th volunteering trip for Refugee Support since 2017!
Having done a lot of volunteering for other organisations, he liked the structure at Refugee Support. But that’s not what keeps him coming back - it’s the people. Listening to those we are supporting is inspiring but also a way for them to be heard. And then there are the volunteers who can be any age from anywhere in the world and spending time with them is always rewarding.
We have a lot of love for Ian because not only does he do all this, regularly fundraise and do a lot in his own community, he is part of the interviewing time recruiting new volunteers.The best kind of people!
05. Bethan Edwards: "There is nothing like that real experience"
What shines through from this conversation is the importance of community and what people can do when they come together. It can be hard work but you get such rewarding results and the people you meet make it all worthwhile.
We are so lucky to have this dedicated, calm and kind-hearted woman as our trustee for volunteers and we know you will enjoy listening to her.
04. Bella Aquilina: "With the right attitude, you can do great things"
Bella gives such an intelligent account of her volunteering that manages to recognise what a rewarding experience it was for her, while also prioritising the livelihoods of people.
Bella is 24 and first volunteered with us in 2018 after her first year of university. She is half-Maltese so has a strong family connection to the experience of immigration and wanted to help. Before that first trip, was not sure about volunteering but the experience bowled her over. Since then, she has completed 14 weeks of volunteering over 4 trips and been running our successful Instagram account for the last 2 years.
This short conversation with this wonderful young woman ranges over: how inspiring people can be, white saviour complex, attachment issues, personal boundaries, mental health, being thoughtful about our work, learning from it, privilege, making peace with it and how to consider impact.
Not only have the community benefitted from Bella’s volunteering but she has acquired some real wisdom from being thoughtful about it.
03. Mandie McGarry: "I came back saying: I want to do more"
Mandie McGarry has a long career in the corporate insurance world but it was volunteering in Cyprus that made her feel like what she was doing what she was meant to do. She describes it as one of the best experiences of her life despite it being a huge emotional rollercoaster.
It was hard work and the first few days were tough but it ended up being exhilarating. This is the confusing and contradictory state of mind that we hear a lot from volunteers. Collaborating with other volunteers and our amazing Cyprus Director Paula is clearly enjoyable but we discuss whether it is right to enjoy helping people who are so desperate.
We also talk about her wonderful experience of giving Tesfay, an Eritrean refugee, a room in her home through Refugees at Home. And how that fits in a country where there are so many hostile attitudes.
02. Desiree Birinci: "I wouldn't want to regret not trying"
She’s just returned from 2 weeks’ volunteering in our new Dignity Market in Nicosia so we talk about what is great and what is difficult about that.
We also discuss the deep divisions between the two communities in the north and south of the Cypriot island following the war in the early 70s and her continuing struggle to build peace between them.
After 50 years of conflict it is hard to be optimistic, so why does this amazing young woman keep going? We love this: “Even if nothing changes, at least when we’re older we can say we tried.”
01. Gulwali Passarlay: "We had hope"
Events in Afghanistan are moving fast and the current humanitarian crisis could overwhelm the region. Our volunteer Trustee Gulwali Passarlay fled Afghanistan as a child refugee 15 years ago. The Taliban takeover has now dashed any hopes he had of returning to help rebuild the country or be reunited with his family.
Hear about the situation in Afghanistan now from one of the UK’s leading refugee campaigners with a unique and insightful perspective on the situation there now. And hear what the UK Government needs to do immediately to help.
You can get Gulwali’s inspirational and jaw dropping account of his refugee journey The Lightless Sky from all good bookstores or Amazon. You can follow his tireless campaigning on Twitter @GulwaliP
If you are concerned about the situation, write to your MP.