October featured volunteer!

Alex Green, Volunteer Coordinator, spoke to Lu Orza who has been named our October Featured Volunteer.

Lu Orza joins me at the Bridport Literary and Science Institute to chat about being our October Featured Volunteer. “What an honour! Yes exciting, I’m really pleased” she exclaimed.. 

Lu has certainly made an impact since she joined us as a volunteer in February this year. Having not really worked with younger children before, she ventured into unknown territory feeling slightly anxious….. “I enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to! I think one of the things that’s great about TBODAN is that you have such a high proportion of volunteers to children, as a volunteer you’re only ever really working with a group of 6 or 7 young children, which is a really manageable number”. 

When Lu isn’t being a story mentor she works in the international development of women’s rights, a role which she has done for many years, but she is no stranger to storytelling. Over the summer she has been holding storytelling sessions in Bridport Community Orchard and she feels that her experience with TBODAN has really helped her build on this as she performs to a younger audience. You may also find her telling stories around a fire, in the woods or even our local pubs!

Lu was talking to a friend about doing more storytelling locally and when her friend sent her the advert, she thought, it just felt right. “What was interesting for me was that I hadn’t really worked with kids before, I was used to facilitating workshops with women’s rights and teaching Italian to older kids”  she explains.

After about 10 sessions the opportunity to do the workshop leader training came up and it felt like a natural progression for Lu. “It’s great to see how kids have a great imagination and how quickly you can form a relationship with them, sometimes I’m really surprised and touched that they are looking to me for help and support and how they want to share with you what they’ve done”

As all TBODAN volunteers will know, the rewards that come from seeing children’s imaginations flourish and helping them get their ideas onto paper far outweighs the challenges. Lu has quite a few workshops under her belt now and she told me a tale of how she managed to navigate a tricky situation in her very first session. “There was one girl in the first storymaking workshop I’d volunteered for. She was very upset about where the story had landed up until the cliffhanger and she was crying about it. To her there was something in it which didn’t make sense. So, I encouraged her, as the author from this point onwards, if something didn’t make sense she could use the characters to challenge it and change it. She did that and resolved it in a way she was really happy with and desperately wanted to read her story out to the bank manager!” 

I asked Lu what her favourite thing about being a storymentor is…”I think it’s there’s a sort of alchemy that goes on with the storymaking and sometimes I think, especially when we’re doing the collaborative storymaking, you sometimes get to a point in the story where you’re thinking Hmmm… where’s this going to go? And suddenly it just works and that’s really fun and it’s the kids who are making it work”

And what advice did Lu have for anyone who is thinking about signing up to be a volunteer at TBODAN? “ I would definitely say don’t worry as you don’t need to have experience of teaching, working with kids or writing. Anybody can do it. The volunteer role is fun and not intimidating. It’s the kids who are doing the work, all you really need to do is give them encouragement. It’s really fun and it’s not difficult. It’s an easy win!”

So, Lu before we go I have one burning question….If this was your last day on Earth and you could go anywhere you like and have one super power, what would it be and where would you go? Lu says, without hesitation….”I’d probably just go to Eype beach and swim underwater being able to breathe, that would be my super power being able to breathe underwater! It would need to be quite a hot day if you could arrange that!” 

I will do my best!

Thanks Lu!

If you’re interested in finding out more about mentoring with The Bank of Dreams & Nightmares, please contact our volunteer co-ordinator Alex Green at alex@thebankofdreamsandnightmares.org