What is volunteering?
Volunteering is any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit someone, the local community or the environment.
Volunteers are not paid for the work they do, although they can usually claim for reasonable out-of-pocket expenses that they incur while volunteering.
We strongly believe that volunteers should not be exploited, so we will only ever advertise volunteering opportunities at non-profit organisations (such as charities, community groups or social enterprises), or statutory organisations (such as hospitals and the court service).
What are the benefits of volunteering?
Volunteering is not just about giving. People volunteer for many different reasons:- for their own enjoyment, to make new friends, gain new skills or refresh old ones, to obtain work experience, to conquer new challenges, to help others, to get involved in their community or to just make a difference.
I had not worked for many years due to caring for a family member, the Pre Volunteer Course gave me opportunity to meet and work with new people.
I wanted to gain confidence and as I had not worked for a while and wanted to get back into a working environment, it seemed like the best option, to get me started.
Volunteering has benefitted me greatly in the time I was there. It gave me the opportunity to become active and the chance to meet people "young and old" on a regular basis. The service I helped provide was highly valued by all the passengers who used it. Every day that I volunteered the passengers couldn't praise the service enough and regarded me as a valuable member of the volunteer team. This alone gave me a sense of good well being and the confidence once again which had been dented as a result of being out of work. At the end of my time spent volunteering I finally found full-time employment again, nearly twelve months on.