WAYNE
VOLUNTEER MANAGER

Hi I'm Wayne

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

From our early days, volunteers have helped enhance the services we offer as a charity. These days you can find people helping in our 60+ weekly courses and socials, such as in cookery sessions, supporting with literacy and numeracy, or sharing gardening and DIY skills at our Flower Pod centres.

Volunteers help enhance our clients’ learning experiences and to increase the activities we can offer. Importantly, volunteers enable clients to build confidence in communicating with other local people, helping to grow stronger communities and social connectivity.

Over the past five years, funding from The National Lottery Community fund has enabled us to further develop volunteering at Reach through our All Part of Life project, and to further benefit from the strength and talents within our communities.

A key achievement has been empowering more adults with learning disabilities to volunteer both in Reach and the wider community – for example within local charity shops and environmental groups. We are very proud of how some people have gone above and beyond in their volunteering by becoming mentors and co-producers – you can find out more about this on our Voice and Participation page: Here.

To all our current and past volunteers, I would like to say a big THANK YOU for all you have helped us to achieve. To find out about volunteering, please email me at wayne.wilmot@reachuk.org or telephone me on 01636 819066.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Wayne

Volunteer for us

All Part of Life Activities

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

Taking time to celebrate and thank our amazing volunteers during Volunteers week

Woodworking project at Flower Pod Newark to build a house for Ducks

Volunteers support preparations for Reach's 25th Anniversary Service

Volunteers 'pulled together' at Flower Pod Southwell for the day, to get on top of the weeds

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

Making Presentations to community groups to promote volunteering

Welcoming Corporate Volunteering teams at Flower Pod Newark and Southwell

Improved volunteer induction processes for people with learning disabilities

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

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

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

Jo

Reach Volunteer

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.

Reduced isolation and loneliness due to enhanced social connections and opportunities to have their voice heard.
Raised aspirations for the future due to increased skills and confidence in being able to share their skills and expertise.
A greater sense of belonging to the community through contributing to their community as active citizens.
A greater sense of independence and autonomy with more control over their own choices.

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!

All Part of Life Activities

Volunteer Stories

Read more about our project

“Empower” launched with help from Reach