When I talk to people about the local community, I often hear people say that they want to do more, but don’t know how to get involved. I wanted to ensure that I did get involved, and a couple of years ago I happened across Ready 4 Action.
It’s an annual volunteer programme to provide support to the local community. Every year on the first Bank Holiday in May, all of Guildford’s local churches get together and help the disadvantaged in practical ways such as gardening, decoration, fixing things, and rubbish clearance.
Usually it’s over all 3 days and as I was already busy on the Saturday I turned up on the Sunday morning. I was disappointed to learn it was cut back to 1.5 days this year, in part due to lack of funding. However I had turned up to do my bit, and paid my £5 registration fee, collected my t-shirt and waited for my orders.
They split us into teams, with a leader and foreman. We were assigned to a garden to clear but the recipient was not in, so we were reassigned to another garden. This was for a family of 7, two formerly single parents who had got together and now had a large family with 5 kids. The garden was large, but probably too large. It had become overgrown with brambles and nettles which had surrounded all of the children’s play areas, and it was clear that the garden had deteriorated into a job that was too big for the residents to cope with.
When our team of four arrived, we joined another team of five. Between us we managed to clear years’ worth of rubbish, leaves, brambles, nettles, dirt, and garden debris. We were joined after a few hours by another team of 3 and then we managed to turn the overgrown mess into a proper garden again. We chatted to the owner who was really grateful. He had got to the point where he didn’t know where to start as it was completely beyond him. As it took 12 of us to clear it, you can see how for one man, it was far too much. Now all he has to do is maintain it!
We filled 2 tipper trucks with rubbish and finished the day with the satisfaction of a job well done. The church had a BBQ for the volunteers but I skipped it in favour of going home for a nap!
The opportunities to help are out there, we just need to make a bit of effort to find them.
If you want to find out more, please feel free to message me or click here for information on the Matrix Trust.
40 things... 
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