Meet Some Volunteers
Catherine Mullay
Catherine volunteers as an Assistant Brownie Guider with Girl Guiding Shetland. She helps with a unit of twenty 7 to 10 year old girls. Catherine has been involved in Guiding from an early age, and says she wanted to provide other young girls with the same great experiences and opportunities as she had.
At a typical Brownie meeting she helps to carry out activities with a group of 20 girls aged 7-10 years. Activities include games, crafts and singing. In August 2005 she helped take a group of Brownies and Guides to Netherurd in Peebleshire for a week long adventure holiday. Many happy memories and new friendships were formed.
Catherine has also helped with training sessions, planning meetings and fundraising events. As a young leader she gained her Baden Powell Award - the highest award available in Guides. She went on to gain her young leader certificate - Making it Count - and gained her leadership qualification at 18 years old.
In March 2006 Catherine received her MV Award of Excellence for 200 hours of volunteering at Shetland's first MV Award event.
Andrew Lindsay
Andrew volunteered as a Trainee Advisor at Shetland Island's Citizens Advice Bureau. He started volunteering because he wanted to put his free time to constructive use. A typical day consisted of working closely with the other Advisors to answer the many telephone queries they receive, as well as interviewing those who visit the bureau in person.
Trainees may be given work to carry out on their own, but there is always a qualified advisor nearby to check their work and point them in the right direction. All volunteers at the Citizens Advice Bureau receive comprehensive training. Andrew felt a great sense of achievement the first time he worked on a query on his own.
In March 2006 Andrew received his MV Award for 100 hours of volunteering.
Jordan Smith
Jordan volunteered for Disability Shetland as an Office Volunteer in summer 2005. In 2006 he was back in the office on a Shell Step Programme placement. Jordan's role as a volunteer was to update the organisations database. This involved contacting local businesses and organisations to find out what access they had for people with disabilities. He also enquired whether they wanted any advice or information about access and disability issues.
Jordan started volunteering 'for something to do in the summer, but then when I started doing it I realised what I was doing was quite helpful'. He says 'it was good experience of working in an office environment, which I had not done before, and also something for my CV.'
The end of summer holidays meant that Jordan left to go back to university before the project was finished, but he got a real sense of achievement when he realised how much he had done. Volunteering was also a good way to make contacts and he reckons this led to him working on the Step Programme for the next summer.
Jordan also volunteered as a steward with the Cunningsburgh Show, and at the debating union at his university.
Jordan is signed up as an MV volunteer and is working towards his Award of Excellence.
Barry Irvine
Barry has been volunteering since 2001. He volunteers with Epilepsy Support Group (Shetland) as a Website Designer. Barry had the idea of setting up an Epilepsy webpage himself and had started work on it independently before he got involved with the group. Now he maintains and updates the Support Groups website on a regular basis, and is currently redesigning it. His most memorable moment as a volunteer was when the website went live on a paid-for server. This meant that Barry could work on the project in a much more flexible way, and it was easier to change pages and upload new ones. Barry is very enthusiastic about web design and certainly knows alot about it. To have a look at Barry's webpage, and to find out more about Epilepsy go to http://www.esgs.org.uk/
Barry is an MV volunteer. He received his Award for Excellence for 200 hours of work on the website at the MV Award event which was held in October 2006.
Return to main MV Awards page