Celebrating our wonderful Volunteers!

Clockwise – Jack, Sarah, Isobel, Gwen, Emma and Brenda

“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much”

– Helen Keller

It takes a lot of people to make ACT run smoothly. From administration to finance and accounting, social media and technology, there is an awful lot that goes on behind the scenes.

Volunteering is at the core of how ACT operates and carries out its work both in the UK and in Africa. Our model is based on minimising our costs, so that we can spend more of the money on educating the children and empowering the widows. Without the support of our UK based volunteers, we would have been unable to impact the lives of the more than 6,000 children and nearly 2400 women-led households we have helped since our foundation twenty-four years ago. This week we are shining the light on some of our current volunteers to find out why they chose to volunteer with ACT.

It is important to know that our volunteers come in different forms, from students studying in higher education who give several hours of their time each week, to people currently in full time employment who carry out tasks for us after work and others who are retired and offer their skills and experience to support our work

Brenda

First up is Brenda. She is a retiree and long-term volunteer at ACT. She currently provides administration and supporter care management. She is likely to be your first point of contact if you are a child sponsor.

“ACT is an amazing Charity. I love that the children in the countries supported by ACT are given a chance to be educated and the widows are cared for. It’s great to hear of the positive outcome of those that are supported, which is very encouraging.”

– Brenda

Gwen joined ACT as a volunteer in 2009 after retiring from full time employment as a senior manager with Serco. Although her background is in IT, she transitioned to managing the finance and accounting functions for ACT. In 2017, Gwen was appointed as a trustee and board director at ACT.

Sarah

Sarah is one of our more recent volunteers. She is in full time employment as an IT manager and serves in the same role of Information Technology support at ACT.

“One of my passions is helping others in any way I can, and I believe the best way to give back is service to others. We all have something to offer, whether we have experience or not.”

– Sarah

Jack works in the City of London and is senior manager at an equity trading company. He joined ACT as a volunteer communications officer in 2014. He went on to design our website which he has managed ever since. He uploads blogs and carries out regular updates to make it easy to find out about our work.

Jack

“Through the incredible leadership of Kunle & ACT trustees, the hard-work of ACT volunteers, and the network of ACT alumni, I am continually inspired by the huge impact ACT continues to have in the day-to-day lives of disadvantaged children, orphans and widows.

ACT provide them with opportunities which otherwise they would not have. To support ACT is to become part of the ACT family. It’s a great organisation and I’m proud to be a small part of it.”

– Jack

Isobel

Emma

The ACT social media communications team is made up of Isobel (a postgraduate student at Durham University) and Emma who works full time for a London based charity. Between them they write the fortnightly blog articles (like this one!) and manage our social media accounts.

“We would love it if you could please follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and get others to follow us too”

– Isobel

In a particularly difficult and challenging past two years, what with the Covid pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, it is this dedicated and hardworking team, along with our small full-time staff that have together steered this ship successfully.

We are always on the lookout for more people to join our team of passionate and dedicated volunteers. If you would like to find out more about volunteering with ACT so we can help even more vulnerable children and widows in the 8 African countries where we work, then please click here.

Your support means a lot to us, every donation we receive enable us to support more disadvantaged children and women in need in Africa, whilst minimising our overhead costs. To donate please click here.