Why volunteer?
Volunteering is a great way for you to get involved and share or develop your skills. By volunteering, you’ll make a valuable contribution to the work that Your charity does throughout the local community in the borough.
No matter what amount of time or skills you have to offer, you can make a real difference.
Benefits of volunteering
Volunteers make a big difference to the work that our charity does, but there are also lots of benefits for you too.
You can:
- Make a difference to your local community
- Gain valuable experience
- Meet new people
- Learn new skills or make good use of your existing ones
- Support something that you are interested in
It’s a rewarding experience where you can share in the work that we do and learn how we deliver this work.
What’s included?
Leisure Centres (Heywood Sports Village, Middleton Arena and Rochdale Leisure Centre): Volunteers in the leisure centres will work in all areas of leisure including housekeeping, front of house, gym team and aquatics team.
Main roles would include shadowing coaches and setting up and putting away equipment in preparation for sessions, an insight into lifeguard training, swim teacher and gym instructor, meeting and greeting customers at front of house, tours of the building and assisting the reception team in delivering a friendly and professional service and first impression to all customers and visitors.
Gymnastics: Assisting the gymnastics team with setting up sessions and delivering sessions.
Volunteers must have a drive for coaching and some experience of working with children. There’s a chance to upskill and gain qualifications in gymnastics coaching.
Inclusive Sports: We have a range of inclusive activity sessions that benefit massively from support from volunteers. This includes multisports sessions, dance, cycling, and sensory walks.
Volunteers on these sessions may help with things like taking registers, setting up equipment, and assisting individual participants and their care staff to participate in activities fully. At cycling sessions, volunteers may also help with things like fitting helmets, inflating tyres, and pedalling a specialist bike with a participant in a wheelchair on the front or a side by side tandem with a participant next to them.
Our inclusive activity sessions do have participants with autism and learning disabilities who require a consistent approach and who may struggle with social interaction and may demonstrate behaviours that can be perceived as challenging. This means that these sessions are not suitable for volunteers who have an intellectual disability or neurodiversity which means that they may need help themselves to understand appropriate behaviours or tone of voice or social interaction. Our ideal inclusive activity volunteer will be enthusiastic, friendly, enjoy supporting people with a wide range of needs and abilities, and will be able to remain calm if someone is distressed. They will also be generally physically fit and capable of bending down to pick up equipment, pedalling a bike (for cycling volunteers) and being active within a session. Full training and ongoing support will be offered to volunteers on our inclusive activity sessions.
Outdoor Walks: The Community programme includes walks which benefit from volunteer support. Volunteers on the walks may train to be a back walker who is responsible for ensuring that no-one gets left behind, or they may offer support through social interaction by talking with walk participants during the walk.
Our ideal volunteer for community walks will be friendly, sociable, and enjoy walking distances of up to 5 miles over varied terrain in the local area.
Community Sports: Volunteers will work mainly in the evenings with Your Trust community coaches to aid in delivering Doorstep Sports and Youth Clubs in the community.
Holiday Activity and Food (HAF): Volunteers will assist with the delivery of a variety of activities that take place during the school holidays for children and young people.
Hollingworth Lake Water Activity Centre offers a range of watersports and dry land activities throughout the year. As well as employing qualified instructors, coaches and centre assistants the centre can also support individuals who would like to volunteer in the watersports and outdoor adventure sector.
All volunteers will be subject to a DBS check provided by Your Trust before they can volunteer.
If you would like to find out more about volunteering, or are interested in becoming a volunteer with us, please complete your details below and a member of the team will contact you directly.