Individual Employee Volunteering in Manchester

The aim was to provide a hot food and outreach information services to homeless people, and for the volunteer to help people less fortunate than himself and to learn more about his community.

Company Type: Retail and Finance
Venue Type: Homeless Outreach
Time Commitment: 1 evening minimum
Location: Manchester

• Activity Type: Soup run; delivering hot food and information to homeless people.
• Outcomes: The volunteer found that the experience challenged his perceptions of homelessness and the venue were able to continue with their service, enabling them to reach more people due to the extra help.
• Venue Profile: The Mustard Tree aims to improve and rebuild the lives of homeless and marginalised people in Manchester by providing support through the provision of emergency food, clothing and furniture. Clients include many different people including those living on the streets or in temporary accommodation; refugees and asylum seekers; people recovering from addictions; the long term unemployed; those recently released from prison and families with little money who are setting up home.
• Process: CSV were asked to find individual placements around the North West to form part of the wider employee volunteering programme. The Soup Run activity is one of a selection sourced by CSV for the company all of which have been checked and filtered for quality of activity and to fit with business priorities. In this case it meant that volunteers were able to improve communication skills while volunteering and the evening time commitment did not interfere with business needs.
  At the initial introductory meeting with CSV, the volunteer and the community venue the volunteering activity was agreed and relevant Health and safety checks were carried out by CSV. The volunteer then provided a reference to the community venue and booked in for the first session.
  At the first session the contact at the venue took the volunteer through an induction process, the volunteer was then ready join the rest of the soup run team to prepare sandwiches, hot drinks and soup before heading down to the allocated soup run site in the city centre to serve the food and give out information about available services for homeless people.
• Volunteer Feedback:
  • “It was a really interesting and challenging experience, which made me confront some of my own pre-held views around the issue of homelessness."
  • "It seemed well organised and there was a genuine enthusiasm for the task, and for showing care.”