‘I am extremely proud of our volunteers, and I am looking forward to building on the amazing relationships we have so we can achieve even greater things in the coming years!’ Andreea, Volunteer Coordinator at Nourish Hub.
As we enter National Volunteer’s Week (1st-7th June 2023), we would like to use this time to thank our team of volunteers at the Nourish Hub for their endless hard work and support. We’ve recently celebrated our 1st anniversary of serving nutritious meals to the public, whilst maintaining our safe and welcoming community learning space. Over the past 12 months, we have been lucky enough to have been supported by many talented and generous volunteers in a variety of areas. The time they provide helps us to keep nourishing our nation, one meal at a time.
With over 50 active members of the volunteer team; preparing meals in our kitchens, serving food to local residents, supporting our office staff, growing our community outreach programmes and supporting the delivery of sessions in the cookery school, the Nourish Hub can serve up to an incredible 200 meals every day, using the food rescued by UKHarvest. Our team creates brand new menus each day based on the food available, and, with the help and support of our volunteers, this is made and delivered to those who need it most.
“I have spoken to a few people whose Nourish Hub meals are their main source of food, who have lunch at the hub and then take away for dinner.’
Our volunteer team currently donates between 30-35 hours a day, enabling the Nourish Hub to support our community in various ways. The energy and talent from our volunteer team is priceless.
We value our volunteers, recognising each person has different motivations for volunteering; perhaps to learn new skills to achieve their goals and find employment, find fulfilment or explore new challenges, develop their communication or language skills or make new friends. One of our volunteers shared a memorable moment when working with us, “I was in charge of delivering food for a whole lunch service. I didn’t realise I could do it, yet Oli, our head chef, did.” Building confidence is a key part of what we can offer our team, and we have great faith in their abilities.
“Andreea, Oli, Idris and the rest of the amazing team are always so positive, and it is an honour to work with them.’
The preparation and delivery of food is the main role in our daily offering, but ensuring there is a safe, welcoming space to visit plays a very close second. One of our regular volunteers was kind enough to discuss where they find fulfilment in their role. ‘Besides helping some of our regular visitors to eat healthily, regularly and cheaply, I think the biggest impact we have is making them feel connected to others.’
As we are all aware, there have been some challenging times over the last 3 years, during the COVID pandemic. Discussions surrounding the difficulties and management of mental health continues to become commonplace and we have found that ensuring our volunteers feel valued, comfortable and supported has had a great impact on their own wellbeing. ‘Volunteering at Nourish Hub has played a very important role in my mental health.’ We are all part of one community, whether we are using the Nourish Hub for food and shelter, working for UKHarvest or volunteering, and value each other greatly. Every individual that enters the Nourish Hub has a vital role to play and we are thankful to our volunteers for ensuring that we can continue working together and are grateful and humbled to hear that we are supporting them on their own journeys.
THANK YOU TO ALL OUR AMAZING VOLUNTEERS!
If you are interested in joining our team, please visit https://www.nourishhub.org.uk/volunteer. We welcome everyone and hope to see you in the future.
