A blog from a Pave the Way volunteer

I started volunteering a couple of months ago. I volunteer a couple of hours a day, 2 days a week. VCS is a relaxed setting and where there is little pressure put on you so I can work at my own pace.

The VCS Radio Cardiff building is a 10 minute walk from the City Centre so it is easily accessible and easy to travel by bus or rail.

My main areas of focus are Administration & Research. With regards to administration:

• I have inputted guests & volunteer contact information and their time and dates that they visited VCS on Microsoft Excel.
• I also have inputted printed receipts of expenses on to Microsoft Excel (on Chronicle and Petty cash).

With regards to research, I carry our research for WellWaves, a community mental health radio show. I put together information to give to the two presenters of the show.

• The Wellwaves radio show focuses on Mental Health.
• The topic changes weekly so I am never doing the same thing.
• Some of the topics I have a bit of knowledge of from personal experience namely the one week which focused on Autism but most weeks I have researched topics which I have no experience of or even on topics that I have never heard of previously (Dual Diagnosis).

I have also had buddying help role from Raj on how to cope with a reception role. I had about 5 hours help from him.

Benefits

• It gives greater structure to my life.
• Most weeks I am resear
  ching different topics or doing different types of administration stuff so there are a variety of things that I am doing which means my voluntary experience is more interesting.
• The staff and volunteers are friendly and more than happy to provide support and feedback when you require help.
• The hours are flexible so you can volunteer however many hours that suits you.
• Provides opportunities to improve skills such as social and communication skills.
• Opportunities to learn new skills but under no pressure to do tasks if you don’t feel ready or interested in these tasks.
  • These new tasks can include administration roles, researching for radio shows, editing shows, doing a reception role which can but does not require you to answer the telephone. Other roles can include a buddying role where you can help someone who needs help on a specific issue.