Episode 10 - Spotlight on Volunteering for the Charity

In this episode Amie Frayne talks about her role as the Volunteer Development Manager and what a vital role volunteers play in just about every aspect of the charity. Amie talks about the types of things volunteers can do at the charity from helping to run events to supporting on our social media channels and much more. You'll also hear from some of our volunteers about their experiences of volunteering at the charity as well as how you can find out about the roles available.

You can find out more information about volunteering at the charity on our website here https://www.thebraintumourcharity.org/get-involved/volunteering/

If you have any questions you can get in touch with the team by emailing volunteering@thebraintumourcharity.org

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If you would like to speak to a member of our support team you can call 0808 800 0004 or email support@thebraintumourcharity.org

Transcript

Sarah: 0:38

Welcome to Let's Talk about brain tumours, the podcast where we'll be talking to people who have been affected by brain tumour diagnosis, either their own diagnosis or the diagnosis of a loved one. We'll also be sharing news and updates and brain tumour charity about what we're doing to have the harm and double survival.

Chandos: 0:55

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. My guest today is Amy and she the volunteer Development Manager at the brain tumour charity as part of the spotlight episode, we wanted to highlight the volunteering officer opportunities that are currently available, and how you can get involved and support the charity. I had a really informative chat with Amy about the roles and the responsibilities of volunteers, and how people can get involved. So let's get started with the episode. Can you tell us a bit about you in what your role is?

Amy: 1:21

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the volunteer Development Manager at the charity. So I have the really lovely role of supporting and enabling lots of different volunteer activities that are happening across the charity. So I work with different teams to help with create new roles for volunteers to help support the team. And also kind of put training in place for volunteers and make sure that the volunteers we do have a really well supported and understand how their experiences. So it's a really varied role, but I absolutely love it. And I love getting to meet kind of people who are really passionate about making a difference.

Chandos: 1:48

And what are some of the types of volleying volunteering opportunities on offer at the charity at the moment.

Amy: 1:54

Yeah, so I guess in short loads, so we're really fortunate to be kind of supported by 1000 volunteers up and down the country who kind of get involved in a real variety of ways. And that kind of depends on the time they have available their interests and their experience. But I guess a majority of opportunities can be done kind of in people's local community, in their region or, or digitally from home. And so I guess if people wanted to get involved in more short term opportunities, then we have things like our head Smart Campaign, so people can help to kind of raise awareness of that. So it's an early diagnosis campaign, which tries to reduce the diagnosis time with brain tumours. And so volunteers have really helped us to do that. And to have the diagnosis time for children also things like attending an event with us. So we have loads of events that the charity organise, but also that are going on, like challenge events happening around the country. So we need volunteers to help us kind of get involved with those, make sure fundraisers have a brilliant time and help those events be really great success. And then even things like people sharing their story, which can be a really powerful way of raising awareness. And then we have other roles, which are kind of more long term with a varying amount of commitment, depending on people's kind of other priorities and things they've got going on. So for example, we've got volunteers in our support team who helped to moderate our support Facebook pages, and are the first port of call on our support line, but also got volunteers who support, manage our social media kind of platforms, and then kind of do research for different bits of fundraising teams, and also help translate our research updates into kind of language, it's accessible for everyone. So there's a real kind of a variety, I suppose. And in addition to that, we kind of try and create as many opportunities as you can for people to share their experience. So most people are a lot of people you know, who come forward about volunteering, I've got a personal connection or reason to be supporting often because either themselves or a loved one had been impacted by a brain tumour diagnosis. So we want to help empower people to be able to use those experiences to kind of create change. So we've got volunteering opportunities that enable people to do that as well. So yeah, and I think all these roles are equally kind of valuable to us to help small or short, short term all makes a real kind of difference to us.

Jane: 3:52

The first time that I saw volunteering involved was six months after my mother's death when Emma ran her first half marathon in Bath. And she decided that she would fundraise for the charity. So on to the two point where I met all the friendly volunteers, and friendly staff from the charity. And sort of from then onwards, we've looked for other events that we can volunteer at. And the main thing is that everyone is really friendly, whether it's the charity staff or the other volunteers, and everybody has one thing in common, they either know somebody that's had a brain tumour or they've lost somebody, or they could be a sufferer themselves, and it's quite diverse. But they've all got one thing in common. So it's a bit like being part of a big family, even though it's funny would probably rather not be part of. So you've got you can talk to people about your experiences, which often it can be quite difficult to other people, even sort of friends and family, people don't really understand because they've not been to the situation. So I've asked anyone who was apprehensive about coming forward and volunteering to just do it.

Chandos: 5:15

And obviously with with everything that's happened over the last year, everything's moved a bit more online. Is there opportunities currently for people to get involved? If they online if they prefer? Absolutely.

Amy: 5:25

So I think it's been a real kind of as my There's been so much negativity and bad things have happened as a result of the pandemic and of COVID. Actually, there's been lots of learnings from that as long as I think in a way, it's made us move more, more digitally. And actually, it means that we've got lots more opportunities now for people to get involved, and say online from home in a way that's really accessible. And, and we know for a lot of people actually going out into their communities and things isn't something they can do for various reasons. And all they've got lots of other commitments. And actually, they can only give a bit of time in the evenings around, you know, childcare and other stuff going on. So yeah, we want to kind of create opportunities there as flexible as possible. So that's one one thing that we really kind of worked on, I suppose over the last year or so.

Chandos: 6:03

So I guess it's kind of helped identify an area that maybe reaches more people as well.

Amy: 6:08

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the more as an organisation, we're moving towards a kind of involving our community more in the work that we do, the more opportunities we're creating for people to kind of get involved in different areas of our work. And that really has an impact on, you know, on our community, more generally. So yeah, I think it's really brilliant. I think it's opened up. Yeah, volunteering to lots of people. So I think that's really super.

Peter: 6:31

My main involvement at present is as a volunteer in the charities research activities. I've been given the opportunity to join the management team of numerous research projects as a patient advocate. These include clinical trials of new drugs, or new approaches to surgery or radiotherapy. The reward for me is the knowledge that my contribution, no matter how small, might prevent people in the future, from suffering, as my wife did, from this disease. And

Chandos: 7:02

you mentioned earlier bit about developing new roles and things like that, I know that the charity is quite quite keen on skill sharing and learning from volunteers. So what's that all about?

Amy: 7:14

Yeah, absolutely. So I suppose while we have, as I mentioned, some of these kind of more fixed roles, where we've kind of put those things together that we know we definitely need as an organisation to support with, we also recognise there are lots of people who have skills, we just think are not sure they necessarily match with the role that the charity has, you know, at this time. And because we're such a kind of fast paced, fast moving organisation, there's lots of new things always going on. Actually, for us, it's really helpful to know about the skills that you know, within our community and people who want to support in future. So one way that we've kind of enabled that is that we've put together what we call a skills bank. And that's for people to kind of let us know about a the kind of time they've got available, but also the skills that they have and the experiences that they might want to share. And then what we can do is, as we're developing new pieces of work, new projects, we can actually look at that skills bank and say, Hey, we've got lots of volunteers who want to help them, we can kind of involve them in these ways, and then we'll go out to those people. So we don't maybe don't know what that looks like when people come to us initially with those skills, but we can then kind of get back in touch and let them know, as and when an opportunity comes up. So it's just a great way for us to make sure that people who haven't found an opportunity yet can kind of hear about what was happening at the charity and new ways they could support us.

Chandos: 8:19

And if someone joins the charity in one area of work in volunteering, does they have to stay within that area, or can they help out elsewhere as well?

Amy: 8:28

Yeah, absolutely. So we definitely want volunteers to get involved in as many different ways as they would like to. So I think what's really nice about volunteering is that often it gives a better insight into different things that we're doing. And you can kind of hear about things, maybe sooner or earlier, because you're just getting more of an insight into what's happening at the charity. So, yeah, definitely, we have volunteers who kind of get involved in one way, and then find out about something else. And we really encourage that and support that. And, you know, I've just Yeah, absolutely. Let us know, if there's, you know, if you're already doing one thing, and you find out about something else, we definitely want people to get involved as much or as little as they'd like to.

Chandos: 8:59

So how do people get involved with volunteering programmes at the charity? What's the first step? Yeah,

Amy: 9:05

absolutely. So I suppose the first thing I'd say, just to find out about the kind of current roles we've got available is to have a look on our website. So if you just search volunteering on our website, then we've got a page with lots of different opportunities and ways people can get involved. But also, I'd really encourage anyone who's kind of interested or just wants to learn a bit more to get in touch with myself and the team at the charity. And that will be by emailing volunteering at the brain tumour charity.org, which I'm sure that you'll pop in some sort of show notes or something. The I really encourage anyone who's interested just to get in touch and happy to have a conversation and share a bit more about that.

Chandos: 9:36

Amazing. Well, it's been amazing. Speak to you today. Me, so thank you.

Amy: 9:40

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been really lovely to chat a bit more about this.

Chandos: 9:43

During this episode, you would have had clips from some volunteers who shared their story and talked about what it's like to be a volunteer for the charity. I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of the charity to thank both Jane Holloway and Peter buckle for sharing these insights. Because without their hard work and dedication, charity wouldn't be what it is today. There are so many ways you can get involved as already discussed in this episode. To find out more head over to the brain tumour charity.org For more information, or to access a support line that the charity has called. Oh 808 800 triple zero that's Oh 808 800 Triple 04

Sarah: 10:18

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss an episode. If you'd like more information, you can visit our website at brain tumour charity.org or email our support team at support at the brain tumour. charity.org. And finally, before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast please can leave us a review on iTunes wherever you get your podcasts so we can reach more people and raise more awareness