Volunteering

In 2017 we were proud winners of The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the equivalent of an MBE for a Business.  We were nominated for this award by City of Wolverhampton Council. Access to Business actively encourages and promotes volunteering opportunities. We are extremely proud of our volunteers and recognise that their work is an important and integral part of what we do and we are able to offer voluntary work within our own premises and also with our partners. We have been promoting volunteering for over 10 years.

Our Volunteer Mentor, Susan Whittaker, co-ordinates and supports our volunteer services and works closely with all of our volunteers as part of our in-house Volunteer-led Group ‘Access 4 All’, which is a vital element to the support we provide and is available to all Clients. Our volunteers are offered opportunities to gain new skills to support their own personal development and those wishing to move into permanent employment are given support on this journey.

Our volunteers assist us with providing feedback and support to help us to shape our services to ensure that they meet the needs of our users.

• Our Volunteering enables people to play an active role in their society and contribute to positive social change.
• Our Volunteers helps to break down social barriers and offer people an opportunity to socialise with people from different social and cultural backgrounds.

We have nominated many of our volunteers for local, regional and national awards in recognition of their services.
We ensure that all of our volunteers are fully DBS checked before enrolling as a volunteer at Access to Business.

Recent success in supporting the development in Access to Business Volunteering Opportunities has secured funding from:

• Wolves Community Trust to support 2 year salary cost of dedicated Volunteer Mentor
• Warburtons Family Trust to support volunteers expenses cost
• Heart of England Trust to support volunteer opportunities

We issue a volunteer agreement to all of our volunteers and, prior to volunteering with us or one of our partners, each individual has a 1-2-1 information meeting with our Volunteer Mentor to ensure that volunteers understand their roles and also that they are fully informed of the support and training available to them and of the wide range of volunteering opportunities available.

Additionally we create a task list for all of our volunteers to help their personal development and enable them to build up their own skills and confidence. Alongside our own volunteering opportunities we partner with many local organisations who also provide volunteering roles for our Clients.

We are extremely grateful to the following local partner organisations for their vital support in providing funding for our volunteering projects: