As it’s Volunteers Week 2024, we though it was a good time to tell you about some of the things our small, but dedicated, team of volunteers do to keep the community centre running.

There are all the jobs you’d expect – opening up, taking bookings, cleaning, setting up furniture and equipment, doing the accounts, doing the admin, making tea (a lot of it!), organising activities and events and offering a warm welcome to everyone who visits.

There are a lot of other things that you might not think about though. We’ve had a look back and some of the things our volunteers have done this year include

• Painting and decorating rooms in the community centre to keep it looking good
• Researching, consulting and applying for grants towards new activities and equipment
• Training in food hygiene and licensing
• Deep cleaning to get the hall ready to use after building work
• Unblocking the toilets and drains (…please, please don’t put handtowels and nappies down the toilets!)
• Building plenty of flatpack furniture
• Washing, drying and ironing many many tea towels and tablecloths
• Organising events from the date to the entertainment to the food and more
• Steam cleaned and shampooed all 122 chairs in the community centre
• Designing and distributing posters and newsletters and keeping our social media and website up to date so everyone knows what’s on
• Repairing doors, toilets, taps and many more things
• Looking for the best deals on electric and gas contracts…it’s not as simple as switching at home either!
• And so much more

No-one gets paid. Everything is done voluntarily so the community centre is there for everyone to use. Please support it – it’s great to see a good turnout at events and activities.

If there’s something you’d like to see, let us know or why not get together with a few like-minded people and start a new group…there are a range of rooms available at very reasonable rates.

There are plenty of things on every week - why not get involved and try something new?

So...thank you to all our volunteers to work so hard to keep the place running. Thank you to all the volunteers who organise and run activities each week too and thank you to you all for supporting the community centre throughout the year.