Welcoming our volunteers – anyone can make a difference

When I first joined Dimensions over 20 years ago, I worked on creating and developing new services. Now, as the Chief Executive, I’m still looking for ways to improve our services and I was very excited to launch our volunteering programme this year.

Volunteering with Dimensions

Volunteering isn’t completely new to Dimensions. Informal volunteering has been happening across the organisation for some time.

Our staff are often willing to donate their spare time for special projects. They are highly trained and dedicated, but simply can’t do everything.

Demand comes from the people we support too – they have told us they would like more opportunities to try new things and do more of the things they love.

This is where the idea for a volunteering programme came from – our staff and the people we support. We wanted to find a way to make sure everyone who wants to be involved, can be.

Volunteers are not here to replace our staff. They support their work, free up more time and resources and gain new life skills in the process.

Why volunteer?

People volunteer for different reasons:

• to give something back to society
• to explore a potential career path
• to build their network and meet new people
• to develop or learn new skills.

Everybody is different but everybody has something to offer.

We have volunteer storytellers who write our success stories to be published on our website and promoted on social media.

We have community volunteering champions who oversee the roll out of new programmes across the country.

We have volunteer drivers who are helping people we support get out and about even more.

We have “buddy” volunteers that accompany the people we support to the cinema, football matches or even the salon.

Ultimately, it’s an incredibly rewarding opportunity and we’re confident our volunteering programme offers something for everyone.

You can help too

We’re recruiting for volunteers across the country. Think you can be a gardening or cooking buddy, driver or add value to someone’s life?

Find volunteering opportunities in your area.

If you have any questions, please email volunteering@dimensions-uk.org

At Dimensions, our vision is of an inclusive society where people have equal chances to live the life they choose. Our mission is to provide high quality personalised support for people with learning disability and autism, helping them to be actively engaged with, and contribute to, their communities. The volunteering programme is one of a number of ways we are working to make our vision and mission a reality.