Volunteers needed in the North East, North West, and South West

Our volunteers make home visits and assess new applications to provide the essential face-to-face contact between Support Network and beneficiaries. Volunteers call on new applicants to identify their problems, gather financial and other information and write a report for the Grants Committee. Volunteers (often called Visitors, for obvious reasons) also keep in touch with existing beneficiaries in their area to see how they are and to check if their circumstances have changed.

Being a volunteer visitor doesn’t demand a huge time commitment. Quite often, a volunteer will not be asked to visit more than two or three people a year.

Volunteers soon get used to meeting a wide variety of people connected with the Institution, all with different sorts of problems. All of them will be really pleased to meet a Support Network representative. Of course, the main aim is to offer financial or other assistance, but often people just appreciate the opportunity to chat to somebody about what’s going on in their lives.

Many people find that volunteering is a good way to help fellow Members less fortunate than themselves, putting back something into the profession that has given them successful careers in mechanical engineering. And Support Network’s assistance can make a real difference in people’s lives.

By the nature of Support Network’s work, some of the people volunteers may see could be quite frail and vulnerable. So we are looking for volunteers who can relate to others in a friendly, informal way. You would need to be a good listener, to ask questions in a sympathetic way and to report objectively.

Some – though by no means all – beneficiaries appreciate volunteers keeping in touch, either through a phone call very once in a while or a visit or both. There are no hard and fast rules – it depends on what both the beneficiary and the volunteers wants – and everyone’s different.

If you would like to learn more, click on the As a Volunteer link on the left-hand side of this page for more information.