Volunteering help

Allegra Dowding and Catherine Downes, both gap students, arrived at the community centre on the 9th of December 2010 and were there until the 31st. They were joined later by their fellow gap student, Maddy Fox, who arrived on the 24th of December and who was of considerable help in completing the necessary tasks before the start of the medical camps. Their timetable was pretty full and each day had been divided into three sections, keeping all three girls very busy and ensuring their time spent was highly productive.

Mornings spent with the MBCF medical team profiling hundreds of patients ensured the success of our December "Mega Medical Camp". The visiting specialists had all essential information to hand and consequently were able to provide the necessary care required by each individual patient. The patient profile forms created by the girls provided the professionalism that allowed all medical camps to run at the best levels of efficiency. Lessons have been learned by all involved and a similar approach will now be adopted for all of our future medical camps.

Afternoons were taken up with the two teachers at our learning centre: they were shown and taught all different sorts of art and craft techniques using the wonderful equipment provided by the Beavers. This will allow the teachers to demonstrate and in turn teach the learning centre children how to create spectacular works of art. In addition, Allegra was also involved with artwork in the new playground which now provides a colourful backdrop of all our "Leavers Groups" from the learning centre. Each child pressed their individual bright red handprint onto this beautiful backdrop to create the petals of flowers and leave a lasting memory of their time spent at our learning centre. A very special moment took place when some of the CP children, seeing the fun to be had and actually understanding it, also wanted their hands to be painted bright red and to leave their handprint. This wonderful, emotional interaction resulted in a single flower being solely created by these amazing chidren.

In the evenings, Catherine, Allegra and Maddy, having taken advice from Heather Morgan, continued the spoken English lessons with members of the Youth Group. Their main aim was to try and build confidence among the young people so that more members would come forward.  With  their friendliness and positive encouragement, the girls were very successful and, forgetting their past shyness, many Youth Group members are now requesting timtabled spoken English lessons. Haven would like to thank Allegra, Catherine and Maddy for offering their time and enthusiasm, they have made a real difference to many people.