As an activity volunteer with our young carers and young adult caregivers service you will be supporting us to deliver a range of activities for children and young people. This could be helping us deliver a craft session, cooking class or an outdoor activity.
What’s Involved?
We deliver our sessions across Gateshead and the surrounding area. If you’re not happy to travel this might not be the opportunity for you. We run shorter evening sessions during the week and all-day sessions (up to 8 hours) on a weekend. We also deliver over the school holidays. Some of our young people have challenging behaviour and creating a welcoming and familiar environment with faces they know really helps. This means we are looking for people who can commit to a volunteering at a regular session longer term.
This role wouldn’t suit you if you can’t manage a bigger commitment. Because relationships are so important in supporting the people we work with knowing that you, their favourite volunteer, are at a session could make the difference in someone attending. We plan our sessions months in advance which means you’ll know exactly what you’re signing up for. It also means we can give you the opportunity to get involved and help plan and organise what we deliver.
We would ask you to help with set-up, registration and offering a warm welcome to the children and young people attending. Then you would then help us to deliver the session. This could be arts and crafts or a walk through Saltwell Park. You need to able to engage in a high energy and fun way and make sure everyone gets involved and enjoys themselves.
Skills and Experience you need
There are a number of skills and qualities that we need you to have to carry out this role:
- Friendly, fun and outgoing
- Reliable
- Empathetic and understanding of the needs of young carers
- Flexible and a willingness to ‘get stuck in’
- The confidence to use your initiative
- Great communication and listening skills
- Active and able to keep up
- Resilient
Do you have an are of expertise that you think might be useful? We would be happy to discuss how we can use your skills or interests to support our work.
How we will support you
There will be members of our team present at each activity who would direct you in what to do at each session.