This year, Sarah has been volunteering with The Back Up Trust – a charity for people with spinal cord injuries. Due to COVID, they have unfortunately had to amend the services they offer. Previously, they organised and ran courses for people who have recently been injured, helping them to get back to work or into a new routine.
Now the support has been transformed into virtual guidance. The Back Up Trust runs lounges every week for people to join on Zoom and speak with others. There are different rooms that people can join to speak about various topics from, art to music to history. This provides a community for those to join from their homes. She joins the room for those with family members who have a spinal cord injury.
Another service The Back Up Trust provide is their mentoring service. This ran before the global pandemic hit and has continued throughout. Sarah calls up my mentor every week to provide support and guidance about having a family member with a spinal cord injury.
During each of their calls they set goals and targets and run through a list of resources that may be useful. This week they spoke about suitable clothing for wheelchair users, such ponchos and lose fitted trousers. Next week they will go through different dietary requirements and setting new mealtime routines.
Because Green Element gives her the full day a month off I’ve also spent time with The Green New Deal – helping their comms team look up news stories to post and writing their newsletter. Here she spends her time attending meetings to be kept in the loop with their work so that she can assist in writing blog posts and other media.
Yes – I used to go to a college for young adults with learning difficulties once a month which I can’t do anymore though I have done the mentoring for 5 years or so with different mentees. The Green New Deal work is interesting. However, I would really like to go back to going out and helping in real life!!
Michael got outside on a litter-pick for Keep Britain Tidy. He was pleased to make the most of his first volunteering opportunity as part of his role at Green Element. Each month we all have a day to spend volunteering and this was a chance to get away from the desk and stretch the legs.
Rather unexpected was how much of a challenge this turned out to be. He would be picking alone this time, with just a couple of podcasts for company up on Corstorphine Hill – a city nature reserve in Edinburgh. The area is frequented by many local residents and is a model escape from the city confines. Michael was blessed with a warm and still autumn day. It also throws up its’ own challenges in terms of litter.
According to his app the pick covered 8 miles and 1528ft of climbing burning 1187 calories. At times it felt like it too! The total litter mounted to 31kg.
Felt like he made a dent in the amount of litter in the reserve. The main paths were surprisingly tidy, but off the beaten track the quantities of junk mount up. Spent at least an hour collecting a cache of bottles and cans into 4 large bin bags.
Found drinks can which can only have been from the 1980s due to its opening mechanism. Highlights were seeing a couple of deer who eyed him wearily in their neck of the woods.
As someone who has volunteered a lot in the past in different organisations it was surprisingly difficult to find roles due to current Covid-19 restrictions and the challenges they have placed on charities and the voluntary sector. The council usually help with PPE and litter picking equipment if ask – but this is all on hold during the pandemic. For disposal you also have to book in a slot at your local tip.
Alex volunteered at Share Community‘s nursery in Tooting, a 2.5 acre social enterprise garden space within the grounds of Springfield University Hospital. Share facilitates students with disabilities, who come here a few days each week to learn horticulture skills and spend time with others.
His time this month was spent working in one of the greenhouses, laying a ground cover to stop weeds sprouting in the areas around the vegetables being grown. In between this there was time to catch up with the students and staff, hearing how everyone was doing since I’d last seen them at the beginning of the year.
Share has been very important over the past few months, as it means that the students have a safe space to see their friends and spend time outside of home, something which is not always otherwise available. They have continued to do this through a split of online and in person classes and activities across their two sites.
They are always looking for volunteers and I highly recommend getting in touch as it’s always an enjoyable experience. Otherwise the nursery sells a great assortment of indoor and outdoor plants, open weekdays 10am-3pm.
This was my first time volunteering since March. I felt safe as there were a number of procedures in place to safeguard volunteers and students, and I was outdoors most of the time. I would like to find a volunteer position where I can apply my skills but haven’t searched in detail.