After the success of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham – ‘the Friendly Games’! – volunteers again came under the spotlight and received huge praise for helping to make the event memorable and enjoyable for nearly 1.5 million visitors.
While they demonstrably add a great deal to the event, the praise reflected on the volunteers enhances the feelgood factor and provides its own reward, something that often gets overlooked when ‘reasons to volunteer’ are highlighted.
In fact the social benefits of events, including those felt by volunteers, are now being talked about in relation to the benefit, legacy and return on investment from holding such major events, but the same is true of smaller scale operations and activities at local level.
This fits perfectly with the first role we have to offer this week:
parkrun – multiple volunteer roles
parkruns are free, weekly, community events all around the world.
Saturday morning events are 5k and take place in parks and open spaces, including Dinton Pastures. On Sunday mornings, there are 2k junior parkruns for children aged four to 14 (the nearest are in Woodley and Bracknell).
parkrun is a positive, welcoming and inclusive experience where there is no time limit and no one finishes last. Everyone is welcome to come along, whether you walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate.
Volunteers are fundamental to the delivery of all parkrun events and carry out roles such as setting up the event, marshalling, timekeeping, scanning, handing out finish tokens or tail walking, to name just a few.
Green ‘n’ Tidy’ volunteer gardener service provides a basic gardening service for elderly and disabled residents of Wokingham Borough who cannot maintain their own properties, do not have local family support and/or lack the financial resources to employ commercial companies.
This project does not compete with established gardening businesses as we are a charity and the team of volunteers provides basic gardening, including lawn mowing, hedge trimming and weeding, to vulnerable people in need.
Our teams go out six days a week (Mondays to Saturdays) and you can sign up to a regular day (or days!), for either a morning or afternoon session.
We are currently looking for more volunteers to join our teams, so if you like being active outdoors, part of a team, helping people in need and feeling that social benefit, please get in touch now.
Woodley Library – Rhymetime Helper
We are looking for a volunteer to act as a Rhymetime Helper at Woodley Library.
This role entails supporting the lead Rhymetime Volunteer is running our sessions for babies aged 0-18 months.
These sessions are an opportunity to share simple stories, rhymes and songs with young children.
The Rhymetime Helper will be expected to help set up the library space for the session, check-in attendees, direct buggy parking and safeguard the area.
There is flexibility to this role and we are always happy to expand our volunteering roles should volunteers want to do more at our sessions.
Rhymetime is an important element for the library in building links with the local community and introduces the library and its resources to children. It is also a social occasion for parents and carers.
These are just a few roles on our books. Please visit our website www.volunteerwokinghamborough.org.uk to find out more about volunteering and have a look at all the roles we have to offer. If you would like to get in touch with us, please call 0118 977 0749 or email volunteer@wok-vol.org.uk.
