Volunteering in York - how I became a trustee

um, can I ask you a quick question about how long you've lived in the area you are volunteering in? OK, so I've lived in York for just over 10 years. And how did you get to York in the first place? Um, just through, um, the partner that I met. I was living in Leeds at the time, met a partner who lived in York and moved over to move in with her 10 years ago. Fantastic

And how did you end up getting involved with the project that you you're talking about? Um, I'd taken redundancy from where I'd worked. I worked at the same place for 28 years. Um, I'd previously done some volunteering work abroad in Romania and and Southern Africa

Um found myself with a little bit of time on my hands because I was taking a bit of time out before going doing some travelling, um, and just saw an advert on social media initially for volunteers for a charity based in York, A kitchen for everyone, which, um, provides services to the homeless and the vulnerable. Um, so I had a bit of time on my hands, put myself forward initially as A as a volunteer. And how has that gone Since then, It's gone because the organisation has grown

Um, I then got more involved with the running of the organisation because they they needed to register, Uh, as a CIO, um, they didn't have anyone with any formal governance background. And whilst my background wasn't specifically, uh, in the charitable side, I came from a very much a compliance governance regulated background. So I agreed to take on, uh, the role of secretary, um, and do the application for the charity and help them get up and running

Initially, I was meant to be for a two year period, and six years later on, I'm still involved. And who do you enjoy working with in that within that charity? And we're really fortunate that we've got quite a lot of really committed volunteers. Um, so it's great when we go down to, you know, when we do a a breakfast service, for example, um, and seeing, um, what the volunteers get out of it and also how they're then interacting with people who probably don't get to speak to very many people during the day

They might be the only person that they speak to, Uh, in a in a day. Yeah. Yeah, Brilliant

Um, And what's been the best bit last over the last month or so. Has it been a highlight or a a good moment? Uh, what's been a highlight is, um, setting up another service within the charity that we do. Um, so we're now being able to expand on, But we have done a little bit of this in the past, but they're able to expand on, um, funding a mobile dentist to come or, um, um, operate at the side of one of the homeless hostels

So for people who struggle to to register with a dentist and certainly afford a dentist, uh, we're able to provide, uh um this mobile dentist dentistry service for them. That's brilliant. That's it

Thank you so much..