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Volunteer Newsletter: February 2020

Stockport County FC Bucket Collection

As you may already know, we were kindly invited by Stockport County to collect at their match against Sutton United on Saturday 18th January. We raised a fabulous £410.35. Thank you to our volunteers; Terry, Graham, Ian, Sharon, David, Ruth, Alice, Karen and Leon for their help! Pictured right with Josh from Stockport County Community Foundation.

Stockport County FC Bucket Collection

Special Thanks – Karen!

Karen has been volunteering with us since October and she has been fabulous in the time she has been here! She has volunteered for a wide range of events and activities. Karen is pictured left dressed as Mrs Clause at our Christmas dinner in December with Ernest, who is finding something very amusing!

Karen-as-Mrs-Clause

Special Thanks – Steve!

As you know, volunteering comes in all shapes and sizes at Walthew House. Pictured right is Steve, a local builder who kindly offered to paint the wall in our main hall, ready for the launch of our new art & history project. Thank you Steve!

Steve painting main hall

We are so lucky to have so many amazing volunteers at Walthew House. We would specifically like to thank some of the volunteers from some of our groups and activities that we don’t see every day! Thank you to Faith, Linda, Rory, Amy, Naomi and Ruby from our youth club. Our youth club volunteers join us on their Friday evenings in term-time to assist our youth club leader, June. Thank you to our tandem-cycling group volunteers, Brendan, Ian and George. To Janice, Barrie, Keith, Irene and Patricia who run our steel band, and thank you to Sue who runs our hand bell ringing group on a Monday afternoon! Thank you to the volunteers who make our weekly walking group possible; Sinead, Peter, Lindsey, Linda and all of the volunteers from Bramhall & Woodford Rotary club.

Upcoming Opportunities

Walthew House Cup – Wednesday 18th March
We are looking for sighted guides to assist some of our visually impaired participants.

Easter Fair – Saturday 21st March
The fair is between 12pm-2pm but volunteers are needed both before and after the event.

Ongoing
Collection boxes – We have collection boxes all over Stockport, if you are able to collect and replace any please let me know your preferred area and we can have a chat about how many/specific places. Also, if you’re a regular in a pub/salon/chippy/café etc and you’d like to ask them if they’d accept a box that would be great! We’re always looking for new places to take collection boxes.

Walking Group – We have a weekly walking group that meets at Stockport Harriers Athletic Track every Tuesday 11:00am – 12:00pm. We need volunteers for this group to help guide people around the track and also just general support to be there and help with opening up and locking up sometimes, refreshments afterwards and as a general help if anything were to happen to one of our service users to ensure their safety. It’s a great group who are fun and friendly and it’s a great reason to get out and do some exercise.

Help Desk – We are looking for somebody who can assist us on our help desk on a Friday morning.

We are always looking for new and exciting ways to raise money for Walthew House! If you have any ideas that you would like to run by us please speak to Shannon. Call: 0161 480 2612 or email: funding@walthewhouse.org.uk.

We have recently set up a Facebook page for our volunteers, if you would like to join just search ‘Walthew House Volunteers’ in the search bar on Facebook.

Additionally, we send a semi-regular email out to volunteers with upcoming opportunities, if you would like to be added to this email Shannon on funding@walthewhouse.org.uk.

Our volunteers and carers coffee morning runs the first Monday of every month. Come along Monday 2nd March (10.30am – 12pm) to relax in our comfy chairs, enjoy a tea or coffee with biscuits and have a chat. It’s really informal and you don’t have to stay for the whole duration – just pop in when you can. We would love to see as many of you there as possible.

Our Making the Most of your Hearing course in January booked up in two days! The half day course, which is open to people with mild to moderate hearing loss, family members and professionals working with people with hearing loss, covers: tips for making the most of your hearing, assistive technology, and introductions to lip-reading and sign language. If you’re interested in joining the next session, please let us know.

The Stockport Carnival is back and the organisers are looking for volunteers! If you’d like to be involved in this event please find them on Facebook under Stockport Carnival or let me know and I’ll pass on the message!

If you are looking to add to your volunteering portfolio then the Do-it Volunteering page created by Stockport Council is a great place to start. The page can be found at www.stockport.gov.uk/do-it-volunteering or by simply searching ‘Stockport Volunteering’ in Google. There are over one million volunteering opportunities on there! From volunteering centres, voluntary groups, and national and local charities.

Around 80 regular volunteers support Walthew House. We always welcome new ideas and we would love to hear about the skills our existing or new volunteers have to offer! We are especially keen to hear from people with British Sign Language skills! Please do let your friends and family know about Walthew House and the volunteering opportunities we have.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your continual support for our charity. We would not be able to do what we do without all of our volunteers!