Volunteer
Volunteering is highly rewarding, and beneficial to the community, plus it’s good for you! Our volunteers make a significant difference and by gifting your time, you can help fight depression, loneliness and isolation, helping to keep people happy, healthy and connected.
Volunteering is the perfect opportunity for anyone, whether you’re in between jobs, wanting to gain experience for your CV or recently retired! It’s great way to show employers commitment, give something back to your community and keep your confidence levels high; you’ve probably got a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience that could be really useful to us.
We’re run entirely by volunteers without which we quite simply would not be able to operate and do the work we do. Our volunteers are now like our extended family.
Our guests have a unique perspective on life and share some fabulous stories from their lives. They’ve lived longer, experienced more, learned how to survive through good times and bad and are a constant source of inspiration that too few get to know. Whatever your age and life experiences, you’ll also find the feeling’s mutual. Phrases like ‘you’ve brought the meaning of Christmas back’, ‘your smile and kindness have made my day’ show the value of what volunteering means to others.
Areas that we require volunteers
Events
Drivers are essential to our events. We can pick up as many as 90 guests from their homes and return them afterwards. To help as a driver you need to have a 5 door car.
Hosts
Many of our drivers choose to stay for the duration of our events and help us as hosts, however we also always welcome additional hosts from nursing or caring backgrounds. It is essential to have qualified staff to help look after those of our guests who need a little extra support.
Fundraisers
We run entirely on donations from you, our supporters, so any help towards our fundraising efforts would be greatly welcomed; whether that’s a sponsored walk, fundraising coffee morning or large scale event!
Admin
A lot of preparation work goes on behind the scenes, both before and after each event, to ensure each event runs as smoothly as possible. Keeping in touch with our guests, running our social media pages, updating our website and the general day to day running of the charity would also be part of this role.
Our volunteers support us in a number of ways and so as to ensure the safeguarding of our guests, full reference checking and a DBS check will also be carried out.
See what our volunteers have to say…
‘The first time our family volunteered was Christmas Day. Neil, my husband, was away at work for Christmas and New Year so our Christmas wasn’t quite complete. I saw the ‘Not Home Alone’ Facebook page and thought; what a lovely organisation to be involved with. The children were a little apprehensive beforehand, but straight away we were all made to feel very welcome and involved. After telling my husband all about our Christmas Day he was very keen to join in, so we put our names down to do the next event which was Easter Sunday. We had a fab day and it was lovely to do it as a family. We were away for the summer event but back again for Christmas! It feels really good to make other people’s Christmas a bit happier than it usually would be if they were at home alone. It’s quite hard to describe just how good it feels.’
Neil and Emma
“Instead of being on my own, I have had the most wonderful day, thank you so much!”