Phil Puttock

Becoming a Volunteer Buddy

On the 7th and 14th October 2009 a group of strangers, including myself met at Volunteer Centre Slough for the first instalment of our Buddy Training.

The project is in association with Slough Working Better, a project that works with young people and adults in and around the borough of Slough.

The aims of the project are to support clients in a numbers of ways through helping them with their job search by :

Meeting up with clients for a coffee and a chat about their ambitions and goals, Helping them to Fill out application forms and preparing for interviews,
Finding suitable volunteering opportunities for clients to get involved with, along with many more.

All these actions will be carried out within a supportive environment and by buddies providing a listening ear.

The training was spread over two days and included a lot of interesting tasks and exercises, we worked on:

> Understanding attitudes and values of mentees

> Understanding barriers when working with mentees

> Improving communication skills through role play and exercises

> Overall working as effective team members by sharing ideas and listening to each others points of view.

For me, the best part of the whole training was meeting my fellow buddies, they were all so friendly and easy to talk too, others had commented too on the diversity of the group, and we all seemed to gel together, have fun and work effectively.

It’s an experience I enjoyed and would defiantly recommend to anyone!!