The Advonet Group are looking for people to volunteer as Citizen Advocates and Autism Mentors. Both roles will involve working remotely and come with benefits including free awareness training, expenses and regular supervision.
Citizen Advocacy
Volunteer Citizen Advocates are paired with an adult with a learning disability. They meet regularly online and help them to make their voice heard and have their rights met. The video below features Citizen Advocates and their advocacy partners talking about what they do.
The role is remote to begin with and then will move face-to-face when lockdown restrictions are lifted.
On Thursday 15th April from 5pm-7pm, we will be running Citizen Advocacy Training. It covers some of the history about learning disabilities, advocacy basics and more about Citizen Advocacy and communication. This will be held on Zoom.
Also, volunteers will be asked to attend the induction training on Tuesday 20th April from 5:30pm-7pm. They will also be asked to attend Learning Disability Awareness training; the date for that is to be confirmed.
If you are interested in becoming a Citizen Advocate, please email our Citizen Advocacy Volunteer Coordinator Caroline at [email protected].
Autism Mentors
Our Leeds Autism AIM team are running free training sessions for anyone who would like to become a volunteer Autism Mentor. The Mentor’s role involves being paired with an autistic adult and helping them set and achieve life goals.
Mentors meet regularly with their mentoring match remotely and can receive supervisions from AIM’s Volunteer Coordinator. To find out more about the Mentoring role in full, please visit this link to the AIM website: Mentoring with Leeds Autism AIM
The next training sessions are on Saturday 8th May and Saturday 15th May. Both run from 10:30am to 3:30pm and are on Zoom. The first one covers autism awareness and the second goes into detail about what mentoring involves.
In addition to that, there is an induction session on Tuesday 20th April from 5:30pm-7:30pm. That will also be held on Zoom.
If you are interested in going on the training and becoming a mentor, please contact Fay, AIM’s Volunteer Coordinator. Their email address is [email protected]. They will then send on the Zoom details to you.
Other volunteering opportunities
There are volunteering roles available with other parts of The Advonet Group, including in our Leep1 service. If you would like to volunteer with us in any other role, please email [email protected]. More information is on our Volunteering page.
