It’s Volunteers’ Week!
As part of Volunteers’ Week (June 1st-7th, 2019), we’d like to extend our sincere thanks to all of our volunteers for their commitment and incredible contribution. In this, our 80th anniversary year, we look forward to welcoming new volunteers to help take us into our next 80 years!
The Citizens Advice service started in September 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, and is supported by 22,000 volunteers across England and Wales. We have 252 volunteers in our centres and community locations in West Sussex – Burgess Hill, Crawley, East Grinstead, Haywards Heath, Horsham, Shoreham-by-Sea, and Worthing, and surrounding areas – and we’re looking for new volunteers to join the team.
Our volunteers give their time each week to supporting local people, in roles including adviser and reception, and new roles helping people to complete application forms for benefits, and working alongside our caseworkers. We also have non-advice roles such as research and campaigns, and communications. All our volunteers help us to meet our aims: to provide advice to people for the problems they face, and to improve policies and practices that affect people’s lives. Last year, our volunteers helped more than 34,000 people with problems such as benefit issues (including Universal Credit), debt, housing, employment and more.
Our volunteers are from a very diverse range of backgrounds and age, enabling the organisation to benefit from their different skills and experiences. Volunteering has many benefits, including increasing confidence and learning new skills, as well as making a positive difference to people’s lives.
Wendy, a volunteer at one of our Citizens Advice centres, said:
‘I like the team that I work with here, talking to the clients is lovely and the satisfaction from helping people is the reason why we all volunteer here. It is rewarding, fun and varied – you never know what you’re going to see. We have fantastic support that allows us to deal with the wide variety of issues we see. I would definitely recommend volunteering for Citizens Advice.’
Julie Martin, CEO at Citizens Advice in West Sussex (North, South, East), said:
“Our volunteers regularly give us their time and energy freely to make such a huge positive difference to people’s lives and help keep our vital service running, which we simply could not do without them. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of the volunteer team, and recognise their enormous contribution. Thank you. If you’d like to help people in your community, and can spare a few hours a week, we’d love to hear from you.”
To find out more about volunteering opportunities and the different roles on offer at Citizens Advice, and to apply online, please click here.
