Focus on Volunteer Centre Sutton
Showcasing the work of another newly funded organisation and new member of VSF
Volunteer Centre Sutton (VCS), I am reliably informed by Sue Jobson, the Goldstar Good Practice Worker at Sutton, is one of the largest in the country. (Goldstar is the Cabinet Office funded project promoting good practice for volunteers from socially excluded groups).
VCS has 32 paid staff and is delivering a large portfolio of services -supported volunteering for volunteers with additional support needs, youth participation, direct services to the community for vulnerable people (services such as shopping, wheel chair pushing, pension collecting and DIY), driving for older people and people with disabilities, a befriending scheme, the garden enterprise, an appropriate adult service for young people and vulnerable adults attending Sutton police station without an adult friend or family member and the youth mentoring project – to name but a few.
VCS has around 600 volunteers on its books and 14 work in the centre itself.
VCS has just been commissioned by London Councils to identify sports and cultural opportunities and events across 7 South London boroughs; to provide volunteer opportunities and use events to promote sports and cultural related volunteer opportunities to excluded groups. Specifically the centre has agreed to recruit volunteers from BAMER, disabled and young people’s communities.
The project is to be co-ordinated by Sue Jobson across Bromley, Croydon, Merton, Sutton, Kingston, Richmond and Wandsworth and it is very much a partnership project. The money is to be shared across the boroughs and 180 volunteers need to be recruited across the 7 boroughs. The volunteer centres will be working with 45 sports clubs to develop 90 new volunteering opportunities. The 1-year pilot will begin in August 2007.
The project has already got off to a good start with a feasibility study done by VCS and the need has been identified, relationships with key strategic partners are already well made, such as that with South London Sport Partnerships, CSPAN, Go South Go and Surrey Football Association.
Sue’s background is in the disability sector and she says that sport and leisure is new for her, she strikes me as a woman who can turn her hand to anything. It is her passion for the project and for working in the community to make a difference to people’s lives that impresses me most, that and the scope of Volunteer Centre Sutton’s work.
The main aim of the project is to look at the policies and procedures of the 45 sports clubs and assess whether or not they are able to support volunteers, to recruit the volunteers and engage them in sporting a cultural opportunities in the build up to the Olympics.
Sue tells me about some of the other work and something that particularly resonates with me, and my green fingers, is the Gardening Enterprise project. There is a new greenhouse behind the volunteer centre in which a plethora of tomato, courgette, bean and other plants have been grown from seed by volunteers some of whom have mental health issues. The plants are then taken to VCS’s allotment and grown, some plants are sold on, and others produce crops that are eaten, shared out or sold. A booming ecological enterprise. I plan a visit to the allotment. Sue tells me of one volunteer who worked on the Garden Enterprise project and loved it so much that he got an allotment of his own.
It is the impact of work such as that done by Volunteer Centre Sutton on the lives of individuals that is impressive. The difference their work makes is tangible and this new project will build the skills both of the volunteers that are recruited and the sports clubs that enable the opportunities, this really is the legacy the Olympics will bring to London and the lives of Londoners.
this page last updated October 15th 2007