Elodie’s Volunteer Diary: My First Month
I’m Elodie and I’m a new volunteer at the charity Accuro. This is a monthly diary of my experience volunteering. I’m 19 years old and recently finished college and wanted to document this experience, in the hopes of inspiring people that are thinking of volunteering and wanting to know what it would be like to be a volunteer.
I started volunteering because I have recently left college and I wanted to experience the working world before getting a full time job as well as it being an add on to my CV. Accuro looked like a good place to start as I admire it’s aim to empower people who have a disability to be themselves by offering a range of activities to encourage the participants to build confidence and independence and aims to help people feel less isolated. Therefore, as well as being an amazing service, there is a range of opportunities for volunteers to help out from working at events to helping out in the office, which I found an appealing aspect.
Applying to be a volunteer was an easy process of a phone interview, an in person interview, DBS checks, contact forms and photograph permission forms. This sign up process was helpfully aided by staff which meant I easily fitted it in around my college course.
On my first day going in, I was excited and a bit nervous as I had never done anything like this before and didn’t know what to expect. However, I was instantly put at ease by the employees of the charity and was eased into work by discussing what needed doing and how to do it, for example doing online work on Canva, which is a way of creating graphics used for the social media accounts. We also discussed what work would be beneficial for me and future careers I want to get into, which I found helpful. Overall I was left feeling excited to carry on working there!
The rest of the month, I have been doing more work including organising hashtags in a way they can be used quickly for social media posts, which on the surface sounds like a small task but is very important as using hashtags helps posts to be found easier, creating awareness for the charity.
My first month has been the perfect way to start learning about the working world. As I have met people in the office who have put me at ease and have been given achievable tasks which has helped me build my confidence. My goal is to develop new skills to get the most out of the experience.
A future goal is to work on upcoming fundraiser, #TryInJuly, which I’m really looking forward to doing as it’s something I have never done before.