I suppose if you’re going to volunteer in Glasgow in the summer of 2014, the most culturally pertinent choice would be to help out at worldwide athletics competition for athletes who can be arsed to turn up to the Commonwealth Games, the Commonwealth Games. The games will run in the city from late July to early August this year, and according to the website, this ‘incredible festival of sport and culture’ is going to be ‘Scotland’s biggest ever party’.

That’s right. Even bigger than Coloursfest.

Thing is though, if you’re going to give up your time for a cause, pointing tourists to stadiums they can clearly find on their own might feel like a wasted effort. There’s also the problem that, as with any state-approved voluntary work, David Cameron might at any point jump out of a nearby hedge to point at you and shout “Ah ha! It’s the Big Society! See how big this society is? It’s fucking enormous,” before returning to the darkness to murder the elderly with renewed vigour. No-one needs that.

Plus, you have to register your interest months in advance and provide a CV and go through an interview process and I didn’t so that’s that then.

No, if you’re going to give up your time for an authentically Glaswegian cause, it’s worthwhile checking out organisations that don’t have an official mascot or tartan or sledgehammer. The Marie Trust is one such haven of do-goodery, offering the homeless and those on the fringes of society inexpensive meals, but also – as I would learn only once I turned up to be shown around by the Trust’s head of fundraising and volunteering, Catherine Lavery – sleeping bags, education, legal advice and clothing. The idea is to be a one-stop service to help people through the entire process of turning their lives around, by offering immediate help to find shelter for a night or even just make sleeping outside more comfortable, but also opening up opportunities for a better future in the long term.

“Some people turn up at the centre having been sleeping rough, and their clothes are soaked through,” Catherine explained as we stood in a walk-in wardrobe (earlier, we had honoured the title, by walking in). “So it’s good to have something warm and dry to give them. The more formal clothes,” she continued, pointing towards more formal clothes, “are for service users with marriages or funerals or job interviews to go to.”

Catherine then told me a story about a man who came to the Trust’s door recently, well-dressed and visiting Glasgow on a business trip from the north of England. He sought Catherine out and offered the charity £200 in cash (all he had on him at the time). When this well-to-do gent was pressed on the reason for his generosity, he explained that, two years previously, he had been homeless in the city and The Marie Trust was the only party willing to help. They offered him advice, food, and – when the time came – a suit for an upcoming job interview. He got the job, found accommodation down south and got his life back on track. In the centre’s assistance a seed was planted which eventually resulted in his return, this time as benefactor rather than beneficiary.

Catherine told me this quite matter-of-factly, by way of an explanation for why an organisation I had previously assumed to be just a soup kitchen would have a wardrobe full of clothes in all shapes and sizes. To me, though, it seemed almost biblically resonant: a down-on-his-luck wanderer helped out by the kindness of strangers, making good on that opportunity before returning years later to begin the happy cycle anew. The charity’s entire ethos pulsed through that anecdote. They give someone a chance when it was probably easier to assume he was beyond help; he makes use of several of the wide variety of services they offer; he comes through for himself; then he comes through for them.

On my way home that afternoon I saw that The Sun was boldly publishing the face of a lady they found using heroin in an alleyway under the headline ‘GOBSMACKING’, which is sort of almost a pun. The picture was the story, really: ‘a person has a drug problem, and we took a photo’. They had tried to link it to the upcoming Commonwealth Games, adopting a faux outrage that, with the eyes of the world (lol) on Glasgow soon, there were still people injecting hard drugs in the city. I thought of all the reasons that they’d never run a story similar to the one Catherine told me on their front page: there’s no lurid, privacy-invading pictures to be taken; the story has several parts to it, building a narrative rather than just conjuring up an emotion; there’s subtlety to the character involved; and it suggests the possibility of redemption, making blanket condemnation more difficult. Och, I’m hardly saying anything new or insightful here. I just wanted to stand next to the newspaper stand and shout, “Remember, there’s not just hatred and fear! There’s also compassion and decency and believing in people!”

My part in the good fight was to wash the dishes during breakfast and lunch when people were using the café. When my Dad was a teenager he had a job as a kitchen porter, which, by all accounts, he utterly despised. In the spirit of ‘wanting to see our children do a little bit better than ourselves’, he’d no doubt be enthused to see his son follow in his footsteps, except older and not being paid for it. Of course, what I was really offering was not just my world-class dishwashing skills, but also a prominent shout-out on my blog (which is actually doing frightfully well, reader-wise. Disappointingly it seems to be taking off just as I’m losing creative direction – it took me about 20 minutes to write this bloody paragraph). Without a marketing budget to speak of, the Trust – like most small-to-medium non-profits – is reliant on self-built relationships with communities and individuals, through the power of the work they do and subsequent word-of-mouthery.

I quite liked doing the dishes in that kitchen. No, shut up, I did. It’s not thrilling, and your hands go all weird (marigolds eventually make the wrinkles worse because you’ll invariably stick your hands too deep into the water and then the gloves are just holding your fingers in a damp embrace), but the atmosphere was jovial and the day went by quickly. I was working with the centre’s cooks, Pat and Karen, and café/administrative staff would periodically pop by to ask where the pies were or help figure out which war movie the song on the radio was from (when I informed everyone that it was ‘Paint It Black’ from Platoon I felt so much like part of the gang). I suppose it’s easy to get along with colleagues when you know you’re all doing something worthwhile and helpful.

Karen and Pat both really cared about the quality of the food they prepared, as I suppose everybody in any kitchen should, and I really must point out that Pat makes a great chicken soup which – no matter what anyone tells you – is neither “beefy” nor “shite”.

The bad news is that my dishwashing wasn’t quite good enough to sort out Glasgow’s homelessness problem on its own. Tonight, there’ll still be people sleeping rough, and The Marie Trust’s centre (32 Midland Street, Glasgow, next to the Arches nightclub) will still be busy in the coming week. In fact, demand for the Trust’s services is up 52% from 2010. To keep its crucial services running, the Trust is looking for people willing to organise a ‘Can or Coin’ collection at work or in their communities in aid of The Marie Trust. They accept all kinds of tinned foods to directly aid homeless Glaswegians, and monetary donations allow the charity to run all aspects of its operations throughout the year. Donations are accepted at the centre, or you can arrange a pick-up by contacting Catherine Lavery on 0141 221 0169 (option 2), or by email at: clavery@themarietrust.org.uk.

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