After half a year of full-time volunteering I can safely share the most challenging detail of my work. It isn't the gas stove or cleaning fingerprints off mirrors. It is learning names.
When you work with 60 primary school children for a day or a youth group for a weekend it's obvious that there are a lot of names to learn. And, when I can barely see if the child has short or long hair, the tiny name tags in their jumpers don't really help that much.
So, I've tried different approaches. I've played endless name games, tried grouping people according to their height or age… and then simply given up. My neighbour's' three-year-old seems to learn them all so fast that my newest plan is to take him with me, point at people and ask him to tell me who's who.
Most of the challenges I face in volunteering because of my vision can be solved fairly easily. My name can be highlighted on the weekly rotas, I can write the notes on the flipchart during the training instead of sitting down and trying to read them and there's always someone to check if the carpet is actually clean after I've finished vacuuming.
However, pretending you know someone's name when you don't is one of the moments when I struggle.
So far people have always understood. After all, we do get thousands of visitors every year, I am visually impaired and as one of the oldest volunteers I can always blame my old age (I am 25). A little humour never does any damage.
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