- Date: 01/06/2021
It’s Volunteers Week and we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s given up their time this year to help support our customers.
Volunteering has been a bit different this year, with most it taking place over the phone due to COVID, but that hasn’t stopped our 60+ volunteers.
Between them, they’ve donated over 620 hours of their time to support 151 customers with everything from telephone befriending, to collecting medication and shopping.
78-year-old Jean lives on her own with her cat, Jasper. A few years ago, she was referred to Revival for a befriender and was introduced to volunteer Hannah.
The two would meet up and have a chat about anything and everything . Jean told us: “Hannah is the nicest person and very thoughtful. All the time I’ve known her, nearly 3 years, we’ve got on very well.”
When the pandemic hit, they arranged to call each other once a week, which helped Jean enormously during the lockdowns and restrictions: “Keeping in touch over the phone every week has helped and kept me going.
“She’s also been able to help with little things I haven’t been able to sort out myself, such as she has managed to call people for me or sort the little jobs when she could come and have a cup of tea outside.”
For many of our newer volunteers, they’ve yet to meet their customer face-to-face, as befriender Rea explains: “I’ve been talking to Margaret once a week since we got paired up a year ago. It's all been on the phone, so at the moment we’ve just got this image of how each other look.
“I'm looking forward to actually visiting her rather than just sitting on the end of a telephone. When I mentioned meeting up to Margaret the other day, she was like “oh my god, that'd be so lovely and actually see you face to face”. So hopefully we can do that soon.
“I think volunteering is really rewarding. It doesn't take a lot of your time and it really makes a difference. If more of us can take an hour out of our day once a week to make somebody smile, I think that's really important.”
Alison Lawson, Home Support Team Leader at Revival said: “We’d like to thank all the volunteers who’ve been involved with us over the last year.
“For a lot of our customers, the volunteers are the only contact they have that day or week. Some people don’t have friends or family nearby, so they really rely on that call from a volunteer.
“We’re so grateful to all of them who give up their time to really help bring some life back into our customers’ homes.”