Volunteer

When refugees arrive, they bring with them many issues. The challenge of integrating into a different society with a different language creates many more. The support they need to tackle these issues comes in many forms.

Whatever skills and time you can offer; there is someone who would appreciate your help. Below are some of the roles that volunteers have played so far. Please get in touch if you feel you could help with any of these; or anything else. You can contact the administratr or any of the trustees if you would like to find out more. Note that there is overlap between some of the roles described below, it is quite possible to combine elements into a role that suits your interests and skills.

Trustee

TWR is run by a team of volunteer trustees. We would welcome new additions to the team. We would particularly welcome enquiries from someone with a refugee background. Ideally you will have time to help run the charity in specific areas, such as provision of English language teaching, arranging events or fund raising.  The trustees meet every month or so; we sometimes meet online and sometimes in person in Taunton. You will receive training on what being a trustee entails and on meeting and befriending people from other cultures. You will need to be DBS checked and provide references.

Coffee and Conversation Volunteer

Our popular Coffee and Conversation sessions provide a great safe space for one-to-one conversations between refugees and volunteers. This is a great way for volunteers to find out more about what TWR does. Volunteers are not obliged to turn up for every session. As sessions are in a supervised public space, volunteers only need the basic training.

Befriender

Newly arrived families and individuals are often overwhelmed by all the changes in their life. A small group of volunteers can provide a friendly and trustworthy support in a sea of uncertainty and confusion. Just by spending time with them and showing them around their new town, they can gain the confidence they need to smoothly move to living an independent and fulfilling life in our society.

Teaching English

The most obvious hurdle that families face is learning English. This is a pre-requisite to doing many types of work and also engaging with local services such as schools and hospitals; and using the internet to buy goods and services.  If you have skills in teaching and in particular teaching English, then your help would be especially useful. But even if you do not want to do formal lessons, just spending time speaking in English with families gives them the practice and confidence they need to thrive.

Translation

If you can speak and write in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, or Pashto then you can help us by providing both written and spoken translations of key communications that we need to ensure that all families understand correctly.

Grant Applications & Fundraising

As well as donations from our wonderful supporters, TWR has been awarded financial grants to enable some of our projects. We need to identify and apply for suitable grants to allow us to continue those projects and take on new ones. Experience with writing grant applications would be useful but is not essential to help us carry out this vital activity. We are always looking at ways to increase the funds that we raise from our supporters. We would welcome help in arranging activities to raise more funds.

Volunteer Training

All our volunteers must attend a training course before they are ready to start working with us. This training is constantly updated to reflect the changes in the people who come to us; the projects we are working on; and the current legislation. If you could help us with the preparation of the materials and the delivery of the training to new volunteers, then that would be helpful. Those with experience in education would be especially welcome.

Volunteer Support

TWR appreciates that our volunteers are the key to the work that we do. To successfully deliver our projects, our volunteers need to feel confident and supported in their activities. TWR has a programme of reviewing our projects on a regular basis and asking volunteers how we can better support them or improve their projects. But with more than seventy active volunteers, this is a significant task and help in offering this crucial service would be appreciated. TWR also offers a series of events roughly every two months. Help in organising these events would also be useful.

Publicity

Currently new volunteers, donors and families usually hear about TWR and our activities through word of mouth. It is great that those that know us are happy to recommend us. But it would be good if we could raise our profile and expand our projects to offer more support to refugees in our society. If you have ideas or experience in doing this, then we would be delighted to hear from you.

Current Affairs

TWR is primarily a local charity focused on offering immediate help our immediate neighbours. But we appreciate that the issues that we are tackling are part of a larger picture both internationally and for UK government policy. Our supporters are generally interested in developments that affect our activities. Ideally, we would like to produce information that our volunteers would find useful; and to add our voice and experience to lobbying the UK government. But this sia time consuming activity. If this subject interests you, then you could enable us to expand our activities in this area.

Website Maintenance

If you would be able to help with design or maintenance of this website, then please get in touch.