Volunteer - Save A Life

'I need you to go and sit with this girl back there, she may have been sexually assaulted'

Shit, okay. Here I go, throwing myself into a situation I have entirely no idea how to handle. But she needs me and I want to help.

I'm led through the tent, bustling with other girls who are far too drunk, out into the pitch black. There are containers outside for serious incidents and inside I am greeted with a girl. A crying girl who has blacked out and can't remember the previous 2 hours. Her clothes are intact but she has been a sexual assault victim before and is afraid it may have happened again.

For a second I panic but then instinct kicks in and the urge to comfort her takes over. I reach out and rub her back, repeating over and over again that she's fine and to breathe. The physical difficulty of it is evident on her face but thankfully she listens and manages to calm.

'What's your name? This is mine' perhaps the most important interaction of the night. We are no longer strangers, I am no longer just a face, a worker. I can be a friend, someone she can identify with. And she is a whole person, a person with a name, and hopes and fears and feelings. Not just a victim.

In truth, much of my job that night just required me to talk. To distract her from the encroaching feeling that she may have been hurt. The medics took care of the physical aspect, my boss, the logistics of her safety and welfare. I could have been anyone.

I sat with her for around 3 hours that night while we tried to find her phone, her belongings and make contact with an ex boyfriend, who she had called to pick her up just before she lost consciousness. He had driven for around 5 hours to come and get her and was waiting at the pick up gate of the festival, flowers in hand and grateful to us.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, it's easy for me to recognise the staggering impact that others had on her life that night. Her, for finding her way to our tent, the medics for doing the correct checks, my boss for organising me to sit with her and a buggy to take her to pick up and her ex boyfriend for driving through the night to take her home. But I suppose to her I wasn't. I was the girl with a safe face who talked to her about her university classes, her fashion tastes, her travels, her ex boyfriend, her parents. I hope at least to her, that I was a bigger impact than I give myself credit for.

She hugged me and cried as she left, declaring her thank you's and although I was cold and it was 2 am and it was an overwhelmingly sad and ugly story, I felt a ray of joy that warmed me well into the night.

If you ask me how my job impacts the world, then I will be the biggest advocate for volunteering. The personal impact you have on another's life while receiving nothing (monetary at least) is nothing short of an honour I think. Plus, on perhaps a selfish level, as you bear witness to the dark underbelly of society, you will be overwhelmed with a humbling feeling, that your life, although sometimes miserable, is actually pretty great. And really, there are small but powerful moments of love and light that make themselves very much seen.