Volunteer

This picture shows all the Chinese volunteers of Auckland Lifeline gathered together in their annual meeting in September 2001.

Auckland Lifeline commenced its service in 1965 providing telephone and face-to-face counselling to the public. When people are overwhelmed by any sort of difficulty and feel it hard to talk with anyone they know, then, talking to a trained and experienced counsellor through a telephone may be a good choice. The Chinese community in New Zealand began to increase rapidly in late 80’s. So in 1992, Auckland Lifeline set up Chinese Line to cater the needs of Chinese speaking immigrants.

I brought my whole family to New Zealand in 1992. Soon after I had settled the major issues such as driving licence, schooling for my children, getting familiar with local customaries, I found that there were anxiety and worries within me. In where I was from, these would not be much of concern, because you have close friends there to help and everything is just too familiar to you. But living in a new country is another story. Everything you encounter is new. You are supposed to deal with all the new things with your inefficient English. At times, I felt these challenges were too much for me. But immigration is a one way route. You have to just move forward.

One day, a fellow Taiwanese immigrant living on the same road, whose name was William Chen, asked me if I would be interested in working as a volunteer for Chinese Line. He was already a volunteer of that team, but they needed a lot more to fill up the roster. Thinking that we are in the same boat and we should help one another, I decided to enrol on the training program and become a telephone counsellor.

The training started in July 1994 in a sunny winter day. Four new volunteers of us were accompanied by two senior volunteers working with the trainer, an old English lady called Joyce. The training would be running in three consecutive weekends. That was the first time in my life I was taught the skill of how to listen carefully, how to establish rapport, how to correctly reflect the caller’s feeling, and how to help the caller to sort their problems out.

On the second day of the training, we underwent practice of self awareness. Each one of us including the trainer was supposed to draw pictures or symbols representing our own story in each stage of life either up or down on paper. We called this picture our life map. After everyone had finished the drawing, we took turn to present our story of happiness or sadness to the whole group. This activity is designed to help bringing us to face the unhappy or traumatised past under a caring and supportive environment.

When it was the youngest trainee’s turn to present her life map, she stuck at a point where her unhappy past must be too awful to her that she burst into cry uncontrollably. So she was allowed to do her presentation again in the next session. But the same problem occurred to her in the second attempt, and the trainer could not but explained to her that she should seek for professional assistance before she could help others. So she was dismissed on that day. That was the first time I saw a person collapsed mentally, and I wondered how many were out there in need of caring support.

The training was completed in the third weekend. We were made familiar with the telephone room and other facilities in the building before we left. Then, after having attended another three meetings we were officially placed by the telephone to take calls.

Time flies. I could not count how many nights after a day’s work I drove to fulfil my roster. Sometimes I was on duty by my own for the three hour duty, but most of the times I had a colleague, who took calls of Cantonese speakers, working together, so we could chat when there was no call.

Although it was quite a big load to me as a father, husband, son, and worker and in addition, a lifeline volunteer, I felt meaningful and so I had worked for this organization for ten years till October 2005 when my driving ability was reduced due to my illness.

I am no longer able to travel to Lifeline by car to refresh the friendship with those co-workers. But I am still able to get in touch with a few of them by e-mails. People needs friends and socializing, and that’s why provision of free telephone counselling is a significant offering to the society.