It’s Volunteers Week 2019 and our National Volunteering Manager, Lee Bailey, explains why it is important for everyone to get involved and volunteer, which benefits our customers, the communities where they live and the services we provide.

Riverside is looking for volunteers with a wide range of opportunities available to support customers and marking our volunteering month in June.

Our volunteers provide an invaluable service to our customers, and organise a wide range of activities at our supported services including leading healthy eating sessions, holding arts and craft classes, gardening and helping customers to get online.

We also have volunteering opportunities which have been created for people who have experienced sleeping rough. One such initiative is the Street Buddies programme in Westminster, Manchester and Doncaster where new roles are being created to actively tackle and reduce homelessness.And likewise Riverside colleagues are being encouraged to think about how they can use their two days of volunteering time each year to help and support the services we provide to our customers.

The ways to get involved are endless with colleagues having already taken part in activities ranging from providing community buddy befriending support at retirement living schemes, helping out at our supported services, clearing woodland areas, painting, gardening, dog-walking, cooking and teaching IT skills to assist residents with Universal Credit.The sky’s the limit with the activities available for people to volunteer and we would encourage people to be even more creative this year.

Volunteering has a huge positive impact for Riverside, for our customers and colleagues. It’s easy to lose track of why we do what we do. Feedback shows that volunteering grounds people and helps to transform our customer’s lives.

We’re keen to go a step further this year and are encouraging companies to use their Corporate Social Responsibility time to volunteer with us. We’ve recently had a team from BT support our domestic abuse shelter in Doncaster and are exploring how we can expand our offer to businesses.

For more details of how to volunteer with Riverside please email [email protected].