For Volunteers Week 2023 (running from Thursday 1st-Wednesday 7th June), we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our 70-plus volunteers for giving their time, knowledge and skills to support dozens of people in various roles. As a charity, volunteers help form a major part of our advocacy and inclusion work.
Whether it’s supporting people in meetings, planning for future projects or helping people to set and achieve life goals, volunteers are at the heart of what we do. The roles they are in include:
- Trustee
- Learning Disability Citizen Advocate
- Autism Mentor
- Leep1 Activities Supporter
- Leep1 Club Night Supporter
- Leeds Autism AIM Steering Group Member
- Leeds Autism AIM Hub Assistants and Hub Kitchen/Café Assistants
Hours contributed
Combined, our 76 active volunteers have contributed nearly 1,500 hours between them. This comes in the form of providing one-to-one support in Mentoring and Citizen Advocacy matches, in planning meetings, supporting us at events and helping out at Café Leep.
Our Citizen Advocates and Autism Mentors support 20 people in matches combined. Meanwhile, we recruited 25 new volunteers between April 2022 and March 2023, providing training to 28 new and existing volunteers in the same period.
Volunteers with lived experience – having a similar background and needs to the person or people they are supporting – are integral to some of our services. 25 active volunteers have lived experience, including autism, learning disabilities and being a parent who has had a social worker.
With their help, our volunteers have contributed massively to our work across our advocacy services and inclusion projects. Thanks, everyone!
Opportunities
We have plenty of opportunities available for anyone who would like to volunteer with us! If you are interested in helping to make people’s voices heard or want to support us in any other way, please visit our Volunteering page.
For any general enquiries, please email [email protected] and one of our Volunteer Coordinators will be in touch.
