Wokingham Volunteering

Www.volunteer wokinghamborough.org.uk

AT ABC to Read we believe life is better when everyone can read and express themselves confidently. Our trained reading mentors provide children with the skills and confidence they need to do just that.

A decline in the percentage of Berkshire children achieving the expected level for reading in the recently published Key Stage 2

SATs results, local charity ABC (Assisting Berkshire Children) to read is keen to do all it can to help schools and families in the borough to raise children’s achievement.

With the pandemic over the past two years, we feel there is even more need for volunteers as some children may have fallen behind.

Once volunteers are trained, they are then matched up with a local school.

Commitment is ideally twice a week for 1 1/2 hours in the afternoons but once a week will be considered. The role is extremely rewarding, learning new skills and strengthens our community.

At the current time, we will be conducting online interviews and training. Our next online training will be held on 3 May, so if you are interested, please get in touch ASAP!

■ YPWD Berkshire supports those diagnosed with working-age young onset dementia (65 and under) across many Berkshire communities.

Our specialist team provide services so that people with this progressive disease can maintain their skills, wellbeing, creativity, and a sense of purpose in their community.

We provide workshops and support to those with young onset dementia. Some examples of workshops provided are art, walking, gardening, cooking,

furniture restoration, choir, katakanuing across the working week.

We are continually adding to our range of workshops to meet the interests of those with young onset dementia.

We currently work with a small team of staff and are always looking for the help of volunteers and welcome however much time they can offer to support our attendees at our workshop out in the community, across Berkshire.

We are also looking for volunteer drivers who can help transport our clients to our workshops.

Would you like to be a voluntary trustee for a charity but don’t know where to start? Are you aged 18 to 25 without experience of charities?

We have an opportunity for you to ‘shadow’ our Board of trustees for 12 months, give you the knowledge, training and support needed for charity trusteeship and assist you into an ongoing trustee position.

■ InVOLve Community Services are an ‘infrastructure’ charity – we support other charities in the Thames Valley.

Our Board wants to find a younger person to act as ‘shadow’ trustee, attending 4 Board meetings and our AGM, with a mentor and formal trustee training offered.

Your total time commitment will be about four or five hours per month, much online, including many of the meetings; you can also meet with us face-to-face.

You will be expected to contribute to those meetings; you’ll get opportunity to see how trustees’ strategic plans are translated into day-to-day charity operations.

We are not expecting you to represent “your community”, but we want to enable our existing trustees and the whole organisation to better understand inVOLve Community Services’ future users, to find community voices, understand and reflect societal changes.

At the conclusion of this

‘shadow’ opportunity, our trustee recruitment service will actively assist you to search for and obtain a full trustee position with another local charity. This is a new idea for inVOLve Community Services, and our Board of trustees wants to learn from this, to be better responsive to the local voluntary and community sector.

■ These are just a few roles on our books. Please visit our website www. volunteerwokinghamborough.org.uk to find out more and have a look at all the roles we have to offer. If you would like to get in touch with us please call 0118 977 0749 or email volunteer@ wok-vol.org.uk.