Overview
Our volunteers assist with our Adults Social and Leisure program, which supports our service users to access a wide range of social activities, which include but not limited to: walks, theatre/museum trips, craft sessions and café meet up’s.
Our Volunteers enable people with sight loss or people who have very little social interaction to feel comfortable and confident to attend our events. This could be by greeting and supporting them at an in-door/outdoor event. Many of our volunteers and service users build up a great rapport and a valuable and trusting relationship.
We also ask our volunteers to assist us stuffing our quarterly newsletter, at our Head Office in Derby.
What you will do: To provide support during our social and leisure activities.
This could be assisting during a walk in a park, theatre/museum trip or to assist making refreshments at one of our events in a hired room.
Support service users and the Social Project Worker during indoor activities, for example: a craft or wellbeing session.
Support required interaction with people and sight guide people in/around the venue and location that we would be hiring/attending.
Times Expected: Ad-hoc volunteering as and when required at our monthly events. We have a seasonal event program running through-out the year.
The hours we require support, range from: 2-3 hours per event, this could be for example: 9.30am -12.30pm or for an afternoon or evening for a theatre show, these hours would be more likely range from: 2-4 hours.
Skills you will need to have:
– Have a warm and friendly manner, be a good listener, positive and up-lifting
– Clear and empathic communicator
– Enjoy nature and being outdoors, visiting various locations
– Crafting skills, come in handy for our craft sessions, but not essential.
– Light food and drink preparation
– We do not require you to drive anyone in your own car. If you are able to drive to events this is a bonus, however, it is not essential as we do aim to make all of our events accessible and close to public transport
Training and Support: All new volunteers will receive training about sight loss awareness and about volunteering with Sight Support Derbyshire.
Expenses: We will reimburse your out of pocket expenses in line with our expenses policy, this is usually for things like; parking or petrol.
Before you start: You will need to provide us with the names of two people who can give us a character reference for you.
Our Office is located at: 2a Wentworth House, Vernon Gate, Derby DE1 1UR
This is an excellent opportunity to help enhance the quality of life for visually impaired people throughout Derbyshire.
About Sight Support Derbyshire
Sight Support Derbyshire works with local children and adults who are blind or partially sighted to help them face the everyday challenges of living with sight loss.
Founded in 1914 as Derbyshire Association For The Blind, we are a registered charity (1080986) with small offices based in Derby and Chesterfield. We changed our name to Sight Support Derbyshire in 2012 to reflect the fact that we are here to help anyone with any degree of visual impairment.
Our staff are supported by a group of dedicated volunteers, helping us to provide services in the community, including our mobile resource centre, our children’s activities, and social groups and leisure activities to bring people together and inspire confidence.
Being a local charity is our strength. We know the area and what’s available extremely well, and we pride ourselves on our personal, face-to-face service, which can mean a great deal to someone who feels isolated by their sight loss.
We have to raise almost two thirds of our funding ourselves. We could not do what we do without grants from foundations and other organisations, and without the generous support of the Derbyshire public. The remaining one third comes from supplying services to public authorities under contract.
