Goodbye to Abi

We are sure that people will be sorry to hear that Abi is leaving VCSL after four years as our Manager.  The Trustees are delighted that she is going to an exciting new development within the voluntary sector and we wish her every success in her new role.  But we shall certainly all miss her.  We have appreciated all her hard work over the last few years and the way in which she has raised the profile of the organisation and of the very positive benefits of volunteering within our local community.

New role for Sam

Because of our financial situation, we are not able to recruit a full time replacement Manager.  Both the Children in Need grant (which funded our very successful Youth Project) and the Capacity Builders grant (which funded the admin and resources post) have now finished and our efforts to replace them have so far been unsuccessful.

But we do have sufficient funding to keep the Centre going at least for the rest of this year and Sam Colman will be taking on the new role of Coordinator.  The office will be open two days each week – normally on a Monday and Tuesday and we shall be focusing our efforts on the basic service of matching volunteers (of all ages) with the organisations who need their help. 

We are recruiting an admin assistant to work with Sam for 7.5 hours per week.  They will be working all day Monday of Tuesday, or half a day on each and the appointment will be to start as soon as possible until the end of September.  The pay is £7.00 per hour.  If you would like more details, or know anyone who would be interested, please ask them to contact Mary Christian our Chair on 01539 733275 or send their CV to Mary at Stricklandgate House as soon as possible.

We are awaiting a response to applications we have made to a number of funding bodies and will let you know as soon as we have news.  And do keep in touch with us to find out what’s happening over the summer.  We all have our fingers crossed and hope that you will too!