Phil is a retired teacher and currently volunteers in the village Care Facility twice a week.
“My neighbour is a volunteer, and he was going away for several months and was looking for someone to fill in. From about March this year, he started asking me if I would fill in and I wasn’t keen at first, but eventually, I said ‘yes’. I enjoy it so much now that I will carry on even when he is back.
The beauty of it is that I don’t feel bad about going away to visit family or on trips. I don’t feel obliged to be there every week, because it’s flexible it makes it easy to keep coming.
The volunteering that I do is quite varied. Sometimes the Wellbeing co-ordinator has activities on, and I just join in with them. We had a lot of fun seeing how many yellow garments we could put on in 30 seconds! Most days though I take residents out for walks in wheelchairs. The walks I do are about 20 minutes so I can take about three residents an hour so about five or six residents in a day. We go for a walk and enjoy a conversation along the way.
Each time I volunteer one of the residents will say what a nice day they have had. Today someone said to me “It’s so nice to have a change of scenery”, a small input from us makes a world of difference to the resident's day.
One of the things for me, as a resident of this area for over 40 years, is that there are often people that we know in common so it’s nice to chat to about people that we know. It makes them feel connected. There was one chap that was so interesting I was hoping to take him out again because I had so many questions to ask him about his life and his experiences living in Kent during the battle of Britain. Volunteering here is like life in general, if you are prepared to put in a few moments, you will definitely get something out of it.
Could you spare some time to volunteer at the Village and help our residents feel connected? If you have some spare time and would like to make a difference, our volunteer co-ordinator, Bridget would love to hear from you, call 09 407 0070.
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