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The WELLIES Project offers therapeutic learning activities with animals, plants, creativity and the countryside for people recovering from poor mental health. Typically this is anxiety and depression. People are referred predominantly through job centre work coaches, community mental health teams and social prescribers.
Many participants progress onto become volunteers, either within WELLIES or within other organisations.
The project is very recovery focused and volunteering offers a progression route that is supportive and enabling.
Julie White, Creative Director for WELLIES said “ it’s funny to think that when we first started having volunteers, it was because we had people that had been coming to the project for quite a long time and the funders weren’t happy. By making them volunteers and helping them to develop new skills, we kept everyone moving forward. We soon realised what a valuable asset they were and we now have 28 volunteers working with us every week in various roles such as minibus drivers, kitchen team, garden team, meet and greet minibus ambassadors and more recently digital champions”
WELLIES has recently been awarded the King’s Award for Voluntary Service, the equivalent of a lifetime MBE for the organisation. This felt very special, knowing the severe challenges that many of the volunteer team have faced.
Everyone is very proud of this achievement and committed to developing the role of volunteers even more. Next year will see the introduction of some new roles such as managing materials, food preparation and managing food donations from local supermarkets. The key to success is building into your programme time to support and develop the volunteer team as a whole and as individuals. Think retention as well as recruitment.
Written by Julie White