WAYNE
VOLUNTEER MANAGER

Hi I'm Wayne

I am passionate about the benefits of volunteering and the inclusion of people with learning disabilities within the local community.

Volunteers have always been the lifeblood of what we offer - All Part of Life is our five-year project to develop volunteering at Reach, building on the strength and talents within our communities. From our early days volunteers have helped enhance the services we offer. Funding from the National Lottery Community Fund for a major grant is enabling us to build on our learning and best practice to further develop volunteering at Reach. We are now in the third year of our project, called ‘All Part of Life’.

This year, we have welcomed many more volunteers back to our centres. Volunteers from the local community have told us they felt happy to return to Reach because of our focus on keeping people safe, how we kept in touch throughout the pandemic, and the flexibility we offer to volunteers. They've really enjoyed re-connecting with clients, staff and other volunteers. Thank you to all our volunteers!

My role involves creating and developing new and existing relationships with colleagues, clients, volunteers and organisations (both local and national) to promote and progress volunteering opportunities across Reach.

Please do get in touch with me any time.

Wayne

07432171978

wayne.wilmot@reachuk.org

All Part of Life Activities

Here are just a few examples of what's been happening in the project recently....


Van

Improved coordination of use of our Reach van for volunteering across the charity

Kings mill team

Returned to making presentations to community groups to promote volunteering

FP Newark client vol

Welcomed back Corporate Volunteering teams at Flower Pod Southwell

CVS

Improved volunteer induction processes for people with learning disabilities

Portrait of James volunteering

Arranged new opportunities for adults with learning disabilities to volunteer within other charities

team of people volunteering at Flower Pod Newark

Welcomed our very first Corporate Volunteering team at Flower Pod Newark

Portrait of Ollie at Reach Southwell

Maintained Reach Southwell gardens with help from a client volunteer and young people from a local secondary school

Tom volunteering

Reach Mansfield volunteer Hilary awarded Volunteers Week Shining Star by Mansfield Community & Voluntary Services





Watch our short video to see Lucy and John talk about their volunteering experiences at Flower Pod Southwell



Volunteer Stories

Emma

Flower Pod Volunteer

Katie

Student Volunteer at Flower Pod Southwell

John

Reach Volunteer

All Part of Life in Numbers - 2021 to 2022


Read more about our project

  • To increase the volunteering hours provided by local people in our centres.  We aim to increase from 350 volunteering hours per week currently to 900 per week in 5 years.
  • To increase volunteering opportunities for adults with learning disabilities within our centres and in the community
  • To improve our recruitment, induction, training and support for volunteers, including researching and piloting best practice approaches.

Logo of the National Lottery Community Fund
Logo of Nottinghamshire County Council

How our volunteers continued to support us through the Coronavirus Crisis

One of the things that was hard for all of us during the pandemic was not seeing our wonderful volunteers face to face for such a long time.

Some of our volunteers were able to continue supporting us in other ways, like our Flower Pod volunteers who tended to the garden at times when they could safely visit. We developed a rota so that we could make the most of the daylight hours while clients were not on site. Other volunteers worked on projects like our pilot Volunteers’ Driver scheme and rota.

By the autumn, volunteers gradually began to return to centres safely. We are proud of how we supported volunteers during the pandemic and how they continued to support us: from joining online classes and socials via Zoom to building a self-composting toilet at Flower Pod which you can read more about here.

Thank you to all our volunteers – we couldn’t do it without you!