Irrelevant training for volunteers

Dear Editor,

As a National Trust volunteer room steward of 10 years’ service I was particularly pleased to read Fr. John Barnes’ and Peter Barnard’s letters (2nd and 4th July) since they directly relate to my two main quibbles with the NT’s treatment of their volunteers.

These are, firstly, the imposition upon us of convoluted, patronising (and largely irrelevant to an average volunteer’s duties) ‘mandatory learning’ which covers topics such as the diversity training and institutional racism referred to by Mr Barnard and secondly, the imposition (forgive the repeated use of that term but it is so eminently suitable) of their ‘social and political opinions’, to quote Fr Barnes, such as the substantial item, in the latest Myvolunteering newsletter, on Pride Month and the National Trust’s own Pride Week.

The online training is obviously one-size-fits-all; for instance they advise us to approach our ‘line managers’ and ‘The People Service Centre’ (me neither…) should we be ‘emotionally triggered’ by their Safeguarding module. Now they are also threatening those of us who refuse to do the training with the sack, despite the fact that they know that many people are up in arms on this matter and that there were already resignations last year for this reason. They also seem to forget the current serious shortage of volunteers, partly caused by Covid. I would mention that we have absolutely no objection to some sort of basic health and safety training provided by our respective properties.

As for Pride Week, do such matters really come under the National Trust remit?

Yours,
Anne-Marie Jordan