Our philosophy follows the adage, “give a man a fish, and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” When people contact the hotline with a question, our volunteers do not give a definitive answer; rather, they contextualize the question and provide resources from different perspectives for further education.

It is as little or as much time as you have! If you see a question and feel like you have the bandwidth to answer it, give it a go! If you can join a leadership team and help with backend stuff, amazing!

However, keep in mind that the more volunteers we have/the more people are active, the less of a burden it is on other people.

A few things!

• The best thing to do is educate yourself so that you can answer it. That is why we have created the resource document. Feel free to tell the hotline user you need to do some research and get back to them.

• However, if you really feel uncomfortable, you should feel free to message the volunteer chat and explain the situation, and hopefully one of your colleagues will take over for you.

We will cover this in the training :) But bottom line, no one should feel unsafe, and we have tools to handle this situation if it comes up.