This International Volunteer Managers Day, we’re saying a huge thank you to the volunteer supervisors and managers across St Mungo’s who support volunteers every day.
This year’s theme is Legacy and Leadership: Honouring the Past, Present and Future, and it feels especially fitting for St Mungo’s. After all, St Mungo’s was founded by volunteers. Today, we’ve got over 185 Volunteer Supervisors who have honoured our past and have left their own mark in managing volunteers in the history of St. Mungo’s. We’re celebrating their legacy and leadership by focusing on those who have hosted or are hosting a client placement in the office as they’re taking the theme a bit further, allowing lived experience to shape the future of their teams.
For Sam Watts (Strategy and Research Manager), working alongside a volunteer with lived experience reinforced the value of including client voices in organisational work.
“The preparation and healthy challenge that our client volunteer gave, always being curious and wanting to understand why we were doing things this way, meant that the work we completed together was much more engaging and relevant than if I’d completed independently.”
Neil Le Louet (Health & Safety Officer) shared a similar reflection:
“One thing that has really stayed with me is that often the best solutions come from the very people we are trying to support and keep safe.”
His experience highlights the importance of working with people, not simply for them, especially when developing services, communications and solutions.
For Barry Wilson (Senior Creative and Brand Designer), volunteering demonstrates the skills, creativity and potential that people with lived experience bring.
“Homelessness can happen to anyone. People with lived experience have real skills and a talent for creativity, meaning volunteering can play a key role in a person’s recovery from homelessness.”
Barry says one of the things he is most proud of is helping volunteers build confidence and develop skills that support them towards future employment.
Meanwhile, James Kenyon (Business Development Manager) reflected on how supervising a client volunteer has taken a more personal turn for him:
“How important the words we use with others are; words of affirmation that we leave unsaid can have such a positive impact on people and help them know they are moving in the right direction.”
It’s not just about the legacy volunteers with lived experience leave at St Mungo’s.
It’s also about the investment and commitment their volunteer supervisors have shown in enabling them to get involved, be heard and make a genuine difference.
On this International Volunteer Managers Day, we want to thank every volunteer supervisor across St Mungo’s who continue this legacy in their own ways. Leading by example, each and every one of you enables a volunteer to be themselves, bring in their skills, make a different and continue our volunteering legacy!
You can find out more about Volunteering at St Mungo’s here.