Wellcome Trust team enjoy a corporate volunteering day

What’s it like to be part of a corporate volunteering team?

Nicole and her fabulous colleagues from Wellcome volunteered for us recently. This is what Nicole told us about her experience:

“We had a wonderful volunteering session with Little Village in Balham, a new South London partnership for us. Our project host Jo was both lively and engaging and after the housekeeping and Health & Safety briefings, she provided us with a little more background to the project. We were there to pack boxes of clothes and toiletries for mums and their kids who had found themselves on the poverty line, many of whom were refugees and victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Whilst they would ordinarily be able to come to the church hall and collect items for themselves, this charity (amongst many) had had to adapt in light of the current pandemic and receive and sort donations based on need which could then be re-packaged up and sent out to their recipients.

Our Wellcome team of volunteers worked in pairs, sourcing and piecing together little outfits that we hoped our allocated kids would be proud to wear, and that would keep them warm through the winter months alongside the everyday essentials that they might need. Jo was our ‘runner’ for the day, finding us the items that might be missing from our lists and miraculously fishing out just what we needed!

We felt very proud to be sending out 22 large boxes for delivery, all labelled and loaded that we knew would put big smiles on more than a few faces. We all felt an added sense of satisfaction through being able to volunteer for our local community.”