• Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Would you like to tell more on the gatekeeping aspect? Imma be honest, I’m not a seasoned volunteer and would like to know more.

    • BoscoBear@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      One woman that works at a heritage farm told me a story about an open house they were having. She wanted to offer a lemon-sugar they made at the farm from an heirloom lemon tree. The woman organizing the event got very upset about this.

      I joined a makerspace recently and in one of the steering committee meetings they talked about a problem they had with people who were not authorized using potentially dangerous or costly tools, and authorized people being unable to get easy access. I, being an embedded systems guy, offered to make a solution to this. They could have taken me up on the idea and just not used it, but instead one of the board members goes ballistic telling me I am not the one to do it.

      I worked with a STEM teacher who contributed a lot of time after hours to help students enter academic competitions. This upsets other teachers, for reasons I don’t understand. They want him stopped. He was getting paid. He told them they could do it too and make extra money (as much as $50/hr) but they didn’t want to. They wanted him to stop.

      A lot of it I don’t understand but it sounds a lot like the politics inside an HOA or a lot of other organizations.