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Volunteers' Stories
Geoff's Story
I was introduced to volunteering when I was recovering from severe depression. It was suggested I could do a little work in a charity shop or something similar. I must admit, this was just not of interest to me. However, I had brilliant social support from care workers, who persuaded me to make contact with the council’s volunteer services. When I first made contact, I was introduced to a man attending day services who was looking for a volunteer to support him to go shopping. I accompanied him to town and through conversation begun to understand the many barriers he experienced as a disabled person using a wheelchair.
When I arrived home after the session, the whole experience had been exhilarating, had opened my eyes to the difficulties disabled people went through and had left me with a sense of achievement. At the second meeting, I met him off the bus. Again, I kept on finding out pitfalls during the day but I was gaining in confidence. This overall experienced confirmed for me that volunteering was what I wanted to do.
After a period of time, I asked my supervisor if there were other opportunities available. I was so keen and open to volunteer at this point, that I took on a number of new roles, including assisting a person to attend a maths course, making pots and models and visiting socially isolated people. This was all reinforced by attending a range of training events.to carry out my role.
As my confidence grew, I decided to widen my volunteering experience and applied to be a volunteer buddy with Disability Equality (nw). This role involved supporting a disabled person to participate in a volunteering placement. My buddying responsibilities have included: supporting a young volunteer to put together a film of their personal experiences of disability and how other people in society reacted to her; mentoring a blind volunteer to develop and run their own social group and supporting a gentleman with cerebral palsy to volunteer with a sport’s initiative at a local school for disabled children.
By this time, I had so many options – I was using a diary to keep up! I had gained not only in confidence, but in experience and this made me want to take on new opportunities and challenges. I have always been a good communicator – I have run both a pub and a guest house in the past. These skills were re-born after my illness and through my volunteering.
In addition to my buddying, I have recently started a new volunteer role with Disability Equality (nw). I support the Men’s health and wellbeing group that meets fortnightly, assisting group members to get involved in the activities and communicate their ideas with other members of the group. I have since learned a number of new skills, such as using a flip chart to facilitate group feedback. I enjoy this aspect of learning new things all the time.
So now I have a range of volunteering roles I’m involved with across two organisations. However, the goal is still the same – to ensure disabled people can be included and contribute to the volunteering world, to help them to gain new skills and improve their wellbeing – as it has with me.
Tags: volunteering
Page Created: Thu 15/09/11 by Andrew Owens, Last Updated: Thu 15/09/11
