THE HAVEN WOLVERHAMPTON
Volunteer Service Newsletter JULY - OCTOBER 2017
- 2nd Edition -
Dear readers, As you might be aware, The Haven Volunteer Service is vital for the good running of the organisation. Every year many volunteers give their free time to help raise funds and support the running and delivery of The Haven services. Volunteers are usually encouraged to volunteer across different departments, being able to develop different roles and boost their skills whilst gaining work experience supporting vulnerable women and children. This newsletter has been put together in order to share volunteers experiences and promote all the activities and events taking place at The Haven. Please, don’t forget to check inside to find out more about all the activities the volunteers are organising and participating in! Why not join them and make a difference? Enjoy!
In this issue... You will be able to find all the events the volunteers have been part of, like conferences, theme events, workshops, fundraising events and much more! In fact, which a whirlwind the past few months have been! Keep reading in pages 2 and 4 Therapeutic Support, Trainings and Activities running at the moment at The Haven Women’s Hub or across our six refuges. Keep reading in pages 5 and 6 Corporate volunteering Keep reading in page 7 Achievements Keep reading in page 8 and 9 Elena’s Case Study, six months volunteering for The Haven Wolverhampton Keep reading in page 10
The Newsletter Team Editorial: Seda Nur Türker Flavia D’Alessandro Valentina Lia Noemi Amideo Marina Rey Elena Pawlak Sonya Strauss Victor Garcia Javier Rodriguez Sheila Rodriguez Graphic Designer and Illustrator: Sheila Rodriguez Management: Marta Rios The opinions expressed in this magazine are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Haven Wolverhampton
Events OWTO - Fashion show at Newhampton Arts Centre
15 July 2017
‘Out With The Old’ a Wolverhampton based clothing brand organised a fantastic event at The Newhampton Art Gallery to raise vital funds for The Haven Wolverhampton. It was a fantastic day with performances from local artists, lots of local businesses, face-painting, food and much more. The event raised a fantastic £162.80 which will go such a long way in helping the women and children that we support. Thank you again to ‘Out With The Old’ for choosing to support The Haven and to our EVS volunteers for all of your help at this wonderful event.
Collection days and Bag Packs
July-August 2017
Our volunteers here at The Haven are so enthusiastic and ready to support the fundraising team wherever necessary. Over the summer they have helped us with numerous bag packs at Morrison’s, Tesco’s, Merry Hill and Marks & Spencer’s. Their help with bag packs and collections have not only helped us to raise a huge amount of awareness for The Haven but have also helped us to raise a whopping £3,118!! We would not be able to continue the work we do supporting women and children in desperate need of escaping domestic abuse without their help – Thank you again to all of our wonderful volunteers!!
NCS - The Challenge
12 August 2017
The Haven Wolverhampton worked with The Challenge programme last August, they made signs for our One million steps walk event, the signs were motivational messages about domestic abuse and empowering women. These signs helped draw attention to the walk and made a fantastic difference for raising awareness. We also worked with a group from NCS who did a week of Haven fundraising activities throughout the month including bake sales, a fancy dress walk and other exciting activities. This money was then split between donations to The Haven and creating toiletry boxes for the women and children we support. These items are vital for women who come to the organisation with nothing and can help get them started in their life away from abuse. Both groups also held awareness days in the town centre, handing out event leaflets and charity information helping to raise further much needed awareness for our events and services.
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Events Wolfie’s Den at The Molineaux
23 September 2017
The Haven spent the afternoon at Wolfies Den talking to the community about our upcoming event One Million Steps. As there was a family match taking place in the stadium it was a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness of our family friendly walk (even dogs were welcomed!) and encourage people to sign up to join us. Thank you so much to our volunteers for all of your help on the day you helped us to raise a huge amount of awareness for The Haven Wolverhampton.
Gulliver’d Dinosaur and Farm Park at Gulliver’s Land 23 September 2017 Children’s trip are back at The Haven Wolverhampton! KidsOut again, gently supplied our organisation with free tickets for our service users. In this occasion, we accompanied our service users to the Gulliver’s Dinosaur and Farm Park at Gulliver’s Land. In the Farm Park, our children had the opportunity to observe different animals such as rabbits, cows, goats and ponies. Regarding the Dinosaur Park they had the chance to have fun and learning about the history of dinosaurs We would like to thank our service users and KidsOut for sponsoring this event. We had a wonderful day organisation and park staff by letting us to have this great day.
One million steps
7 October 2017 As October is the domestic violence awareness month The Haven organised their campaign One millions steps for second year in partnership with Wolves Community Trust. Starting at Molineux Stadium it was a family friendly walk through west park and the city center to raise awareness of domestic abuse.
It wasn’t just a walk, there were many activities involved in that day, for example facepainting for adults and children and they were also joined by Wolfie, Dicky Dodd and The Signal 107 team. At the end of the walk we all counted our steps, because we can’t reach them alone and we can’t combat abuse without your help.
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Events Halloween
October 2017
October is the most spooky month of the year and we wanted to celebrate it with themed parties and creative activities for the women and children. Every refuge was carefully decorated and prepared for the occasion. Our service users had a great time. They were especially excited to celebrate Halloween as they attended and were ready with their costumes to scare us all! In this event, facepainting, pumpkin carving, painting, cooking and trick-or-treat games were some of the activities organised by our volunteers. Both women and children enjoyed carving pumpkins, they shared a moment together and had lots of fun.
BOO!
Bonfire night
3 November 2017 We celebrated a bonfire night at The Round Oak in Wombourne the first weekend of November. We were offered a free pitch to run a tombola and do a collection on the evening in which ÂŁ199 was raised through volunteers running a collection and the tombola sales. We would like to thank them all for supporting The Haven.
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Therapeutic Support & Counselling Counselling helps our women to explore their feelings and emotions that are often related to their experiences. The sessions are held in confidential settings with empathy and respect shown to those who express their feelings. The sessions offer support on coping with challenges and making positive changes in their lives. We would like to thank our now graduated trainee counsellors for their great proffesionalism, commitment and dedication. Coffee mornings and different support groups are also being delivered at The Haven Women’s Hub. Some of them as are follows: Freedom programme, Power to Change and Peer mentoring programme, Believe and Breaking Free support groups.
Trainings Do you want to know more about Domestic abuse? Here you have some of our trainings: Domestic Abuse Awareness, Domestic Homicide Reviews, FGM Awareness, Safeguarding, Early Help, Confidentiality and Information Sharing. For further information email: Rebecca.matthews@havenrefuge.org.uk
Activities The Haven Wolverhampton provides a lot of activities and support groups both in refuge and in the community to help in the recovery of the women and children that access our services. Self-defence classes: Learning how to control and contrast their fear is essential for women that experienced domestic violence and abuse. Attending this classes our service users can increase their selfconfidence, self-discipline and mental health, furthermore it gives them a feeling of safety. Zumba classes: Most service users at The Haven suffer from anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Zumba classes are instructed by professional and qualified teachers where the women dance to a variety of different kind of dances. This can allow them to have fun, express their feelings in dancing, rebuild their self-esteem and improve their mental condition as well as feel healthier, stronger and fitter!
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Activities Ladies night: Once a month we organise one night only for the women. It is important that they can spend some time without their children in a relaxed atmosphere. They can talk, eat some food together, play some games as Bingo or Karaoke singing and watching movies. Cooking classes: Food is culture. The aim of the cooking classes is to promote integration through food, as our service users come from different countries and backgrounds. We are convinced that we can enhance respect among the women by letting them share their cultures. Moreover we want to introduce different ways to eat healthy by inviting chefs and nutritionists that give lessons about food preparation and a balanced diet. Arts&Crafts workshop: Art is the best way to express yourself. This workshop can help our service users and their children to release their emotions and creativity, furthermore it gives them the opportunity to learn new skills or even develop their talents through paint and clay while listening to relaxing music. Make-up lessons: Self-esteem can be undermined by frustrating and humiliating relationships. This is why we believe that a make-up workshop could help our ladies to feel better about themselves, for them to rebuild their confidence and to value themselves. A professional make-up artist comes to the refuges to teach the women using her skills and creating different looks from something more natural to an elegant look depending on the desires of our service users. Children activities: For children the life in the refuge can be challenging. For this reason it is really important to make time for play in order to work on their recovery and to encourage healthy social interactions. We have many activities for them such as puppet shows, decorating tshirts with paint, plant funny grass heads, etc Patchwork workshop run by Heath House Studios: Both service users and volunteers had the opportunity to learn how to decorate a patch using fabrics, felt, threads, wools and embroidery techniques as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This project was organised in partnership with The Grand Theatre as the finished patchworks will form the Giant’s trousers in this year’s pantomime “Jack and the Beanstalk.” They chose between different leaf templates and then copied the silhouette onto the fabric to cut it and start to embroider it; adding the stems with wool. Of course, the children took part in the workshop too, colouring and playing. We can’t wait to see the finished result in the panto.
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Corporate Volunteering
A team of volunteers from Lloyds Banking Group (Pendeford) have put together a 12 month development programme called CORE. This programme has been designed to help our service users develop their careers by getting them involved in a range of activities such as cv writing, interview skills etc. As well as these activities, during the summer a team of volunteers have been delivering different IT workshops at our Haven Hub to help our services users to become more digitally savvy. This has been a wonderful opportunity for the women in refuge and in the community to gain more confidence when shopping online, managing their online banking and applying for jobs on the internet. A new group will start soon so whatever it is that you want to achieve we have the perfect programme for you at The Haven Hub!
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Volunteer Service Achievements The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service On 13th October 2017, we celebrated our annual Haven Volunteer Awards Ceremony. This year’s ceremony was even more special than last year as we had the privilege of receiving the Queen’s Award for Volunteer Service, the highest award given to local volunteer groups across the UK to recognise the outstanding work done in their own communities. We would like to thank all our volunteers, staff and board members for such a great achievement. The Haven was set up by volunteers and we will continue to rely and depend upon them. Volunteers are crucial to the running and leadership of the organisation and we couldn’t be more grateful for their continued support. It was a lovely ceremony, full of joy and emotions and we hope all of you who attended it had a wonderful time. Please, find below more information about this event: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2017/10/21/royal-recognition-for-wolverhamptoncharity-supporting-vulnerable-families/
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The Haven Volunteer Awards Winners Volunteer
Life Time
Service Support
of the Year
Achievement
Volunteer of the Year
SARAH FINCH
DAVID WOOD
MARINA REY VICUÑA
Children Support
Community Support Volunteers of the Year JAVIER RODRIGUEZ
Volunteer of the Year ELENA PAWLAK
FLAVIA D’ALESSANDRO
Helpline Support
Peer Mentor
Trainee Counsellor
Volunteer of the Year
of the Year
of the year
SEDA NUR TÜRKER
PRISCILLA CHANA
NAGHMA FERDOS
Social Work Student
Fundraiser Volunteer
Community Fundraiser
of the Year
of the Year
of the Year
SUMAYYAH AKHTAR
SONYA STRAUSS
MATT PARKES
European Volunteer Service
NOEMI AMODEO, FLAVIA D’ALESSANDRO, JAVIER RODRIGUEZ, VICTOR GARCIA, VALENTINA LIA ELENA PAWLAK, SHEILA RODRIGUEZ, SONYA STRAUSS, LEONIE HANS, MARINA REY, SEDA NUR Corporate Partner
Corporate Fundraiser
of the Year
of the Year
MARSTON’S
PAYCARE
Volunteer Supervisor of the Year KAMALJIT KAUR
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Volunteering Case Study: Elena Pawlak “Six months volunteering for The Haven” Elena Pawlak was an eighteen-year-old pupil living in a small town near Stuttgart (Germany) when she applied to become an EVS volunteer at The Haven. She had just finished school and was volunteering in a primary school and a youth club in Germany. Elena had experience working with children of different ages, supporting them with their homework, delivering private lessons and organising leisure and fun activities for them. Before continuing with her studies, she wanted to live abroad and improve her English, so she decided to take a gap year to volunteer abroad. “Searching for placements in the U.K to gain more experience and to get a deeper insight into the support available for vulnerable children and women, I came across The Haven Wolverhampton. They seemed to be the perfect organisation to volunteer as they encouraged volunteers to work across different departments, being able to develop different roles and boost their skills whilst gaining work experience supporting vulnerable women and children escaping domestic abuse and homelessness”. “At The Haven Wolverhampton, I worked very closely with the women and their children. For me personally, it was incredible how brave these women were even though they were experiencing such a difficult time in their lives. Many flee with no belongings and had a very low selfesteem so it felt very good to help them, whether it was on the helpline, accompanying them to appointments, assisting our training coordinator during the freedom program, organising therapeutic and creative activities in refuge or just by having a private talk and making them smile. This European Voluntary Service at The Haven has been a great experience and has allowed me to become more independent, confident, open-minded and aware of gender inequality. When I left England after my EVS placement I got lovely cards and pictures from the service users and their children. This was very emotional and made me realised that I want to be able to help more vulnerable people professionally in the future. This is the main reason why I have just started to study psychology at University” (Elena, EVS Germany). EVS stands for European Voluntary Service. This is a scheme funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission to give young people in Europe the chance to live up to 12 months in another country while working in a non-profit organisation. Thanks to this project we have been able to add an international dimension to our work and count with the support of an extraordinary pool of very committed and reliable volunteers who have made such a positive impact in our organisation and service delivery. According to one of our Accommodation managers, “Elena has been a very active member of the team during her placement. She has always been passionate about supporting women and children in many different ways. Elena worked directly with service users in refuge and offered practical support as well as support through various activities in refuge and the community. Elena has always been friendly and approachable towards all she comes into contact with. Her support has been very appreciated and she will be greatly missed” . Elena completed a 6 months EVS programme at The Haven and we would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her valuable contribution to the organisation and wish her all the best with her studies. Period of volunteering: March-August 2017 Area of placement: Refuge, CYP Services, Fundraising, Community and Helpline Hours volunteered: 840 hours Financial contribution: £4,704
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