Tuesday 8 December 2009

First Shadowed Outreach.

Today, after a short induction and re-cap on what our duties are as an OutReach volunteer, we went out for the first time with Claire, one of the team at The North office. They try to do OutReach everyday am and pm, but this just isn't possible with the lack of volunteers.

We left the office with a clipboard and chart of a route of vendor 'spots'. As the weather wasn't brilliant Claire was unsure whether there would be many vendors about. It turned out there were quite a few out selling the magazine - 7 in total which was pretty impressive as far as Claire was concerned. 
We were introduced to each vendor and as we met each one she explained how it-'OutReach' worked. Whilst having a chat with the vendor and seeing how they are, the place they're selling from would be written down on the sheet, as well as their badge number. We have to check that they have their badge showing, their bib and also check the numbers of the magazines, to see that they match the ones they were sold. Finally the vendor signs the sheet. Some areas are more popular with selling magazines than others. Claire explained that if a vendor has a time slot in a certain 'spot' in the afternoon, but decides to go somewhere in the morning, however somebody else wants to work there and has no saved spot, then the vendor with a reserved space in the afternoon would have to give it up.
As Claire was explaining the process, it seemed that everything was done very fairly and pretty organised.
Its a pretty relaxed process and as we walked the city centre it was nice to get just a tiny insight into what these people do and how they go about selling the magazine. One strong rule is that they sell, where they've been told to stand and do not wonder. If they are obstructing the publics path then they can have complaints. It was nice to see them greet Claire as a familiar face and with a happy face, someone they could talk to.

I am looking forward to our second, shadowed OutReach next wednesday at 2:00pm. It's in the afternoon again as apparently there tend to be more vendors around in the afternoons than mornings or evenings. Most vendors sell in the afternoon purely because they dont' actually live in Leeds, or for the women that vend, they don't want to travel in the dark on their own. Plus the only volunteers they have only work am with lectures in the afternoon.

We also had a chat to Claire about how they want to engage with the vendors futher, possibly through us taking photos of them, or giving the vendors disposable cameras to use themselves and photograph their day to day lives for us then to do something with, which is something I have just started to think about. Possibly integrating it into college, or putting a little panflet/book together from the point of view of the vendors themselves, maybe to go inside the magazine? All very loose ideas for the moment...but Claire explained, it would be nice to have some 'creative' input from us.

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