The choices we make
Frances Blyth has worked in international trade policy. She’s also lived in France, worked alongside women fighting for human rights, chaired organisations through difficult periods and today leads one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important dementia charities.
Yet over the years, prospective employers have occasionally discovered something she forgot to mention.
“I’ve often forgotten to put my volunteer work on my CV,” she says.
Then comes the inevitable question once she starts in a new role.
“Well, you never told us you’ve done that!”
Frances laughs. The omissions aren’t humility. They’re because she’s never seen volunteering as something that belongs on a CV in the first place.
“I’ve never volunteered to improve my CV,” she says. “I’ve done it simply because I wanted to.”
That might sound obvious, but it turns out to be a surprisingly radical idea. Ask people why they don’t volunteer, and many will offer a plethora of reasons. They don’t have the right skills. They don’t know anyone involved. They wouldn’t know where to start.
Frances had none of those advantages either.
“There was nobody in my immediate family who volunteered,” she says. “It was something I made up for myself.”
That sentence sums up almost everything you need to know about Frances. She didn’t inherit a tradition. She created one.
Her first volunteer role wasn’t glamorous. As a teenager, she was an usher at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin, showing people to their seats in exchange for the chance to watch the performance.
“I got to watch the plays,” she says. “Quite a lot actually – probably more than I needed to!”
From that early start, she went on to collect door-to-door for Plunket as a young mother. A few years later, a friend persuaded her to join the board of the Wellington Sexual Abuse Help Foundation. She knew almost nothing about governance and was a bit hesitant.
“I’d had no formal training in governance at all,” she says.
So, she learned on the job, eventually chairing the organisation.
Later came school governance, international human rights work, community trusts and, after her own mother died with dementia | mate wareware, a decision to join the board of what was then Alzheimer’s Wellington (now Dementia Wellington).
“I thought that would be a nice recognition of dementia and a ‘giving back’ type thing to do.”
That decision would eventually lead her to become Chair of Dementia New Zealand.
Yet listening to Frances, what stands out isn’t ambition. It’s her natural curiosity.
She talks about meeting extraordinary women from around the world who had risked imprisonment because they believed they should have the same rights as everyone else. She talks about whānau navigating dementia, tamariki needing support, and communities trying to solve difficult problems together.
She describes volunteering not as sacrifice, but as discovery.
“It’s quite liberating,” she says. “You can branch into something completely different by volunteering.”
Liberating because it allows you to step into a world you may never otherwise experience. Liberating because you can choose a cause that matters to you. Liberating because, in helping others, you often discover something about yourself.
Perhaps that’s why she rejects the idea that volunteering is only for experts.
“You can actually just decide to do it.”
No qualifications required. No family history. No perfect timing. Just a decision.
After a career spanning trade policy, human rights and governance, Frances has reached an unexpected conclusion.
The volunteer work may be the part she remembers most.
“It’s probably more memorable for me than a lot of my paid professional work,” she reflects.
Then, almost as an afterthought, she says something that may explain why she has spent so much of her adult life giving her time to others.
“I think that’s what a lot of people probably don’t realise,” she says. “It’s how pleasurable it is.”
Te Wiki Tūao-ā-Motu | National Volunteer Week celebrates the contribution volunteers make in communities across Aotearoa, and we’d like to give a special shout-out to all of the volunteers who engage with our dementia community. Without you, many of the services our Affiliates run simply wouldn’t happen. Thank you.
