The Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre has grown from humble origins to become one of the largest VCs in the country. Marion Schumann, the centre’s director, talks about the lessons that have been learned along the way.
The Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre has been operating in West London for 15 years now.
The centre started life in a cramped, first floor office but is now based in spacious, accessible premises just off the main high street in Hammersmith – a perfect location from which to deliver our vision of a welcoming drop-in centre for everyone.
The centre was initially established with the support of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, and we continue to work closely with the Council’s regeneration team.
However, we have since won funding from a range of other sources including the Big Lottery, Russell Commission, City Bridge Trust, London Development Agency (LDA), Lloyds TSB, Learning & Skills Council, European Social Fund, GOL/ Home Office, DWP, ChangeUp and the local New Deal for Communities team.
Two years ago, we secured funding from Brent Council, allowing us to expand our work into the neighbouring borough of Brent. We are currently in talks with the LDA to run volunteering projects in West London as part of the Personal Best programme, preparing the next generation of volunteers for the London 2012 Games.
Reaching out
Our first volunteering projects were what we now call the ‘core’ volunteering activities: finding voluntary work for local residents wanting to put something back into the community or needing more experience in order to find paid employment.
Over the years we’ve refined and diversified these schemes so as to reach out to more members of the community, groups who might not ordinarily have the time or the self-belief to get involved in volunteering.
Our Active Citizens programme has enabled people from disadvantaged backgrounds to gain specific skills – in IT, public speaking and administration – so that they have the confidence to take a significant role in community organisations and charities. Since April 2006, Brent Active Citizens has helped 325 people into training, work placements, voluntary work and paid employment.
Meanwhile our Lone Parents project has given single mums and dads the chance to gain new, employment-friendly skills and experience, in a warm and supportive environment. As well as helping with the costs of childcare, our specialist lone parent advisers have provided guidance on career paths, training courses and CVs and application forms.
Mother of three Joanne McCauley is one of 26 lone parents who’ve found work through the project. Joanne is a great cook who, despite having a hearing impairment, recently reached the national stages of MasterChef. She discovered us through our Jobs Bus – a bus which takes employment advisers around the borough, stopping at housing estates to talk to people about the VC’s work – and came in for a chat.
A lone parent advisor discussed Joanne’s ambitions, sharpened up her CV and helped her find a job in the catering team at the London Oratory School in Fulham. “I’m learning so much about hygiene and cleanliness,” says Joanne, “and about serving large numbers of people – we have to feed 50 boys in the dining room every ten minutes! We also host private functions, so I’ve learned about silver service. If I ever run a restaurant – and the hope is that I will one day – it’ll be a doddle.”
Collaborating
The centre has become more sophisticated over the years at collaborating with other organisations and benefiting from their expertise. Our Lone Parent project is part of a borough-wide Lone Parent Network, which allows our clients to be swiftly ‘signposted’ to local organisations specialising in areas like benefits advice and job brokerage.
Similarly our Experience 4 Work consortium has helped to boost the job prospects of older people, refugees and people from BME groups by bringing together the talents of two London housing associations and the employment agency Nichols. The scheme has broken down a lot of the barriers between the not-for-profit sector and the private sector and has applied some innovative methods to help volunteers into work, including payment of childcare and travel expenses and the use of mentors.
We also provide guidance to voluntary sector organisations on human resources and employment issues, often with the help of partner organisations.
Business Volunteering
One area that is really flourishing at our VC right now is business volunteering, where we help companies to find local volunteering opportunities for their employees. These opportunities could be ongoing or a one-off volunteering ‘challenge’; we will suggest a worthwhile charity, school or community group for them to support and then organise the details of the voluntary work, carry out administration like a health and safety assessment and help to publicise the volunteers’ efforts through the press.
Some of the businesses that we work with are incredibly committed. Recently The Walt Disney Company – which has its UK head office in Hammersmith – completed ten one-day volunteering projects in the space of a month, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company’s worldwide Disney VoluntEARS programme. 250 staff members painted walls and pulled up weeds at community centres, primary schools and historic gardens across the borough.
Companies like Disney that are dedicated to volunteering find that they can give staff an extra level of job satisfaction while positively influencing their local communities.
Tammy McFeggan, Director of Corporate Community Affairs at The Walt Disney Company said: “Giving back to the local community is a priority for Disney in the UK and around the world. Our employees find volunteering to be enormously rewarding, and we consistently work to engage them in a range of Disney VoluntEARS activities. We’ve been working closely with the Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre for ten years and it’s great for all our staff to be involved and realise the difference we can make in our local area.”
The beneficiaries of these volunteering schemes – the schools, charities and local groups – are naturally delighted to be involved, too, not least because the assistance they receive would otherwise cost them hundreds or thousands of pounds.
And as a volunteer centre, we’re keen to continue developing our business volunteering programme – firstly, because we recognise the importance of providing a volunteering service that is self-sustaining and may be able to fund other activities in the future. And secondly, and more significantly, because we appreciate the positive effect of bringing the whole community together – not just those who live in the area but those who work there, too.
Acknowledging achievement
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much time and energy volunteers give up for the good of others. In the last few years, we’ve begun holding events where we can honour our volunteers’ efforts. We host two awards ceremonies each year and have turned our AGM into a free dinner-dance!
These events are intended to give volunteers a sense of just how much they are valued, and they seem to be effective.
Noushin Pasgar, a youth volunteer who has spent the last 16 months volunteering with the Metropolitan Police and local Youth Offending Team, was honoured at the most recent awards ceremony which took place at the Houses of Parliament, in the presence of our MP, Greg Hands.
Says Noushin: “When you’re giving up hundreds of hours for free, it is nice to get recognition for what you’re doing. Having an awards ceremony is really good and it does make you feel appreciated.”
As a centre, too, it’s been important to recognise the professionalism of our staff and volunteers, which is why we applied for (and achieved) the Matrix quality standard.
Working together
Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre firmly believes in sharing ideas with other VCs, having benefited ourselves from the advice of centres such as Southwark VC.
Do contact us via our website, www.hfvc.org.uk or call us on 020 8741 9876.
