Celebrating Volunteers’ Week: Flora’s Volunteering Story

For Volunteers’ Week, Youth United Foundation’s Project Manager Flora Ward shares her personal journey back into volunteering and why volunteers matter more than ever: 

I’ve always appreciated the generosity of volunteers. Working at YUF has given me a deeper understanding of the transformational impact that volunteers make for young people in uniformed groups every week. These volunteers are awe-inspiring: they give so much of their time and their lives to their groups. At a time when youth services and provision have been decimated (YMCA analysis says that local authority funding for youth services in England has fallen by 76% in real terms since 2010-11), uniformed youth groups have continued. The young people attending the groups thrive, and the waiting lists for young people who want to join grow. None of this would happen without volunteers, but the numbers of volunteers cannot currently meet the demand of the waiting lists. 

I was a primary school teacher before working here at YUF. I volunteered at an amazing Brownies unit years ago, when I lived in London. I love working with children and young people. I’ve wanted to start volunteering again for a while, but the busyness of life as a family with two working parents, with extended family the other side of the country (and everything else that the juggle of life contains!) meant I’d been putting it off. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to commit, and I didn’t want to let anyone down.   

I manage the Heritage Youth Partnership for YUF. My local Girls’ Brigade unit got in touch about getting involved. I was thrilled and attended the group a few times to help the girls explore their local heritage and what it means to them. They discovered the stories of notable women buried at our beautiful local Victorian cemetery. The sessions were so much fun: working with the volunteers and talking to the girls about the stories which caught their attention, and how they wanted to share them. They learnt about key figures from the women’s suffrage movement, the first black recipient of an MBE in the South West and LGBTQ+ stories, which they weren’t expecting. On a beautiful summer evening, we walked around the cemetery, looking for the headstones and resting places of these women. The girls couldn’t believe that so much important local heritage was remembered a stone’s throw from their group’s meeting place.  

Helping at a few sessions in this casual way brought back that brilliant, rewarding feeling of connecting, making a difference. The energising effects of working with young people, absorbing their passion and curiosity about the world, is so uplifting. The volunteer team were extremely kind – always offering me a cup of tea and making me feel welcome. I walked home each time with a smile on my face. I’d been thinking about signing up to volunteer weekly, but life was hectic, so I decided I couldn’t commit yet. Fast forward 7 months and YUF’s Board and Director introduced a new volunteering leave policy. If you volunteer (for any cause, which aligns with YUF’s values and supports local communities), you can claim up to two paid days of leave per year. I’m grateful every day to work for an organisation that prioritises flexibility and work-life balance, and knows that policies like this benefit so many, beyond just the employee and employer. I knew I wanted to regularly volunteer, but this volunteering leave policy gave me the extra nudge I needed to take the leap.