Tag Archives: volunteering cardiff

Covid-19 resources

Cardiff volunteering and help resources – COVID-19 coronavirus

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(PLEASE NOTE! THIS PAGE WAS LAST EDITED 12 JUNE 2020. IT IS NO LONGER BEING ACTIVELY UPDATED).

Hi all. Strange times. There’s a lot going on in Cardiff at the mo, so this post is intended to pull together all the main volunteering and help resources for:

  • people looking to help others;
  • people looking for help.

See also:

A number of these groups / resources are on different platforms (eg a lot of main discussion for the Mutual Aid groups is on Facebook groups, so while you may not agree with the Suckerberg, might be time to set up a temporary account just to engage and either volunteer or ask for help). Mutual Aid is exactly what it sounds like – people offering help and asking for help. Please obey rules of basic human decency in these groups (and just everywhere in life).

I’ll try and keep this post updated on a regular basis, so please add anything relevant in the comments and once I’ve checked it, it’ll be added in here.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO SEEK ACTUAL NEWS FROM REPUTABLE NEWS SOURCES – DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON SOCIAL MEDIA!!!! THERE IS A LIST OF TRUSTED SOURCES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST. The Senedd Research blog has a comprehensive list of places to go for information. Like, you wouldn’t wash your hands with mud, so why fill your heads with it, eh?

CARDIFF COUNCIL RESOURCES

Volunteering opportunities through Cardiff Council’s Together For Cardiff scheme (currently looking for people to pick veg for foodboxes, deliver food parcels and volunteers to help with elderly people): Volunteer Cardiff website

MUTUAL AID GROUPS FOR CARDIFF

By neighbourhood:

More soon. Also here is a photo of We Are Cardiff emotional relief pooch after she’s disinfected the house, just in case you need some light relief at the mo.

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NEWS SOURCES:

That’s all for now. Peas. Take care of yourselves, and each other. WAC x

See also:

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Whats on

Trade School Cardiff is back! Barter for knowledge…

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Good news for Trade School supporters, fans, and friends! The Trade School Cardiff (TSC) team have started hatching plans for this year – Trade School Cardiff will be BACK in June 2016!

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They will be running classes between 1 – 12 June, to coincide with the UK-wide Volunteer Week. Little Man Coffee in central Cardiff have kindly offered to host the classes. Hooray!

There are confirmed dates and time slots added to the Trade School Cardiff website, so you can start booking yourself in to teach! Just fill in the form and one of the team will get back to you. More info is on this Teacher Info page.

There are also regular meet-ups at Little Man Coffee leading up to the June sessions – these will take place at 7pm every 1st Tuesday of the month, so do come over on Tuesday 5th April which is the next one.

Come meet TSC, hang out, drink some excellent coffee (or other beverages), and see how you can take part. TSC need all kinds of people to get involved – teachers and students of course, but also volunteers and people who can help us spread the word. If you don’t already know them, they’re a friendly bunch, so just come say hi!

If you have a potential idea of something you might want to teach, but you’re not sure, come and use us as a sounding board!

There is also a new FB group for Trade School teachers, so you can also join that and post / ask questions / discuss ideas online. Check out the FB group here. It’s still a new group so it is a small, select, and friendly group of people who have taught before and who are enthusiastic about sharing support and ideas. Ask anything you like.

For more information, you can follow the Trade School Cardiff team (Angharad, Laura, Lynsey and Noreen) at the following places:

Email tradeschoolcardiff@gmail.com

Twitter @TradeschoolCDF

Facebook TradeSchoolCardiff

Subscribe to their mailing list

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The City

The Green Days Project

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Rob Khoo tells us about his work for the Innovate Trust’s Green Days Project.

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You may have seen some of my pictures on the We Are Cardiff blog before (photos of Llandaff Cathedral and also of visits to the National Museum with my daughter).

My day job is working for Cardiff based charity Innovate Trust, which supports adults with learning disabilities. My job role is volunteer co-ordinator on the Green Days project – a Big Lottery funded project that carries out environmental conservation work in Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cynon Taff.

We work closely with the community park rangers, and the work that we carry out with them is becoming increasingly important as time goes on and council budgets are cut; we carry out all sorts of tasks such as coppicing, hay raking, invasive species clearance and biodiversity surveys.

Mushrooms, Green Days Project  green_days_project - 24  Green Days Project Green Days Project Green Days Project green_days_project - 19 Green Days Project

And the locations are fantastic – we are so lucky in Cardiff to have such an array of wonderful outdoor spaces for such a compact city, I’ve lived in Cardiff all my life and the rangers have taken me to loads of places that I had never heard of! I’ve also learned so much more about the local wildlife from the rangers – I’m particularly looking forward to slow worm spotting in the summer in Grangemoor park.

We’re always on the lookout for new volunteers to join in with us on activities. If you think you would be interested in coming out with us, please contact Rob at rob.khoo@innovate-trust.org.uk or phone on 02920 382151

Green Days website

Twitter – @GreendaysP

Green Days Facebook

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Grangemoor Park, Green Days Project Green Days Project Green Days Project Green Days Project

Green Days Project

Green Days Project Green Days Project

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The City

Help women in Cardiff refuges this Christmas – with Project Shoebox 2015

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Last year I saw a Cardiff Project Shoebox event on Facebook (collecting toiletries for women in Cardiff shelters), and decided to post it up on here to try and spread the word. Apparently it succeeded – organiser Mali Taylor-Powell ended up with 370 shoeboxes, plus loads more crates to give to those in need. This year, we want to help them smash that – but we need your help!

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Too much stuff in your bathroom cabinet? Project Shoebox are collecting shoeboxes filled with unwanted toiletries to make gift boxes for women in refuges in Cardiff and the South Wales area.

Project Shoebox – Cardiff 2015 Facebook event page

(Not from round here? Check out the Shoebox Giving page instead)

This is a community project, where people can help women on their own doorsteps. Project Shoebox wants to help the women who will arrive at Cardiff’s refuges this Christmas. Many will arrive bruised and battered. Some will have young children with them. Some will have nothing more than the clothes they are wearing.

They want your unwanted toiletries like shampoo, body lotion, toothpaste and brushes – collected into shoeboxes! These will become a gift to give these women a new start – and remind them that people can and do care.

WHAT CAN YOU SEND?

You can send anything from your bathroom cabinet that’s unused (or very lightly used).

Think basics like toothbrushes, shower gel, shampoo – but also anything nice like cosmetics or face cream is very welcome. If you’re unsure, ask yourself: would you feel comfy giving this to a friend? If not, recycle it. There’s a big list of ideas further down!

HOW DO YOU GET YOUR DONATION TO PROJECT SHOEBOX?

There will be a donation station at the Sing and Inspire office in Cardiff Bay from Thursday 26 November – Sunday 6 December 2015.

Address:
Sing and Inspire, 11-12, Crichton House,
11-12 Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff CF10 5EE

Hours: 5pm-8pm, Mon-Tues-Thurs-Fri and also 10am-4pm Saturday and 11-6pm on Sunday: ring or text when you’re outside so someone can come and pick up your lovely donations!

Telephone number: 07565 769 036

LAST DAY FOR DONATIONS?

Sunday 6th December 2015 so they can be sorted, boxed, and delivered in time for Christmas!

IDEAS!

You can choose to donate individual items or make your very own shoebox gift. Feel free to get creative, but here are some ideas:

  • New toothbrushes
  • Toothpaste
  • Shower Gel
  • Flannels/sponges
  • Facial wipes
  • Deodorants
  • Hairbrushes/combs/bobbles/clips & grips
  • Sanitary products (sealed)
  • Sample packets
  • Moisturisers
  • Perfumes
  • Body Creams/Face creams
  • Body scrub
  • Make up/ Make up bags
  • Nail polishes / Nail polish remover/ Files & Clippers
  • Cotton wool
  • Hairspray

The women’s shelters have said they are desperate for colouring books and pencils, so feel free to add in any of these sorts of things for children.

You can also choose to make (or donate things for) a baby box with things such as nappies, baby wipes, cotton buds, baby wash, small soft toys, etc.

Project Shoebox are NOT taking any donations of cash, they just want your stuff!

This is organiser Mali, with some boxes of goodies from last year. She told me about how she ended up setting up a Cardiff branch for Project Shoebox in 2014:

 

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“Last year at Christmas time I stumbled across a Facebook page called Project Shoebox. It was a community project, with women organising themselves to help women in shelters in their area by filling a shoebox with all of the toiletries that a woman might need when arriving without any belongings, at Christmas, at a shelter.

“I immediately wanted to fill a shoebox and send it off, so I messaged the group and asked how to go about doing that. Unfortunately the Project was only running in parts of England and there wasn’t one in Wales where I live.

“So I decided to set one up. I contacted Women’s charities in South Wales to see if they were in need of these things and they said that they desperately were. Next, I made a Facebook event and invited everyone I knew to donate. Then they invited people they knew and it spread and it spread until we ended up with enough shoeboxes to donate to three different women’s charities in Cardiff; Women’s Aid, BAWSO and Llamau.”

Want to make a difference this Christmas? You can join the Project Shoebox 2015 Facebook event to find out more, or just follow the instructions above to take your donations to Sing and Inspire.

Happy shoebox making!

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