A - Z Challenge - V is for Volunteering

This year I'm blogging about my local area.  

My area?  Highams Park which is in the borough of Waltham Forest in North East London, (UK) a little known place that nestles between Chingford and Woodford that most people only come to if they have a specific reason to - if not we usually get bypassed.  Suits us.

Having lived in Forest Gate in East London for 36 years (and for my husband 65 years!) moving was a big deal for us.  But we've been in Highams Park since September 2020 so I feel I know enough about it now to fill out 26 posts! 

We've only moved just over 5 miles but we didn't know this area at all before moving here.  Although of course we did have a good look around when looking for a house and there were a number of things we wanted on our check list.

Well I'm writing this post late in the day - it's been a busy day filled with helping out with school runs for my eldest grandson and Volunteering!

Being retired I have a fair amount of spare time. Once the pandemic was finally over I began to look at ways to involve myself in the local community.  

One thing I have done is help out at some of the big events organised by the Highams Park Planning Group such as the Summer Fair and Christmas Market.  This is a good way of being involved and helping out but without a big commitment.  I've been in situations before where I've found myself sucked in to things and then it's been tricky to take a step back.

The main volunteering I do though is to volunteer at the Foodback run through The Hub which I wrote about here.  The Foodbank runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I help out on Thursdays.  Again I didn't want to get overloaded and my Hubby attends a walking group on Thursdays so it made sense to do something on the same day rather than tying up another day.  

The Foodbank operates in the local church and during the session we provide hot drinks and snacks as well as various other services.

There are various roles for the volunteers during the session.  There are people who serve the people coming for food.  We don't just give out bags - people can choose from a wide range of fresh and canned/dried goods with amounts determined by the size of their family.  Then we have Befrienders who will sit and chat with people and try and see how they can be helped in ways other than just providing them with food.

My skill sets are put to good use in the store room.  Each Thursday we get a delivery from The Felix Project an organisation that collects and distributes food that would otherwise go to waste.  Some of what we get is prepared meals that can be microwaved but we also get a range of fresh food and a lot of dried and canned goods.  We also get donations from the public that are collected from various collection points locally as well as donations from a nearby bakery.  We also have a group of people that have allotments who donate food.  Grants and fundraising also provide funds to buy goods.  

The deliveries/collections have to be sorted and either put out to be given to people or stored for future use.  The store room is not huge and sometimes it feels like a game of tetris - moving things around to accommodate all the goods.  There is a good shelving system in place as well as a number of fridges and freezers but finding space for everything can sometimes be a challenge, especially on days when everything has to be moved out of the church because of events taking place over the weekend.

The other role that I regularly undertake is to work in the kitchen.  This involves making cups of tea or coffee, serving cakes/pastries and preparing jacket potatoes or simple things like beans on toast.  Nothing very complicated but surprisingly many volunteers shy away from that role.  I quite enjoy it because it does give me contact with the people using the foodbank.

The good thing about volunteering at the foodbank is that there are enough people that if 1 or 2 are missing we can still function.  There is a paid manager who co-ordinates the volunteers and at the beginning of each month we're asked to say which dates we can commit to.  It usually works out fine and the nice thing is that if numbers are low on  a Thursday for example, people from the Tuesday session will help out and vice versa.

Phew I'm just going to get this posted on the day!  Only 4 more A-Z posts to do.