Covid-19, and being furloughed from her marketing job bounced 23 year-old Chloe Stokes headfirst into volunteering.
Why did you want to volunteer?
Chloe felt honoured to be nominated by her Digital Marketing Apprenticeship tutor to help out at Holding Space, a community organisation providing support for parents, children and families with mental health issues.
Chloe has been using her marketing expertise since March to expertly run the Holding Space social media channels and website, promoting events and all the support resources available. She has even created her own well being tips, gained from personal experience, to help and support others.
Although already aware of mental health and the issues and stigmas around it, Chloe quickly learned so much more – not least the huge impact of Covid-19 that is causing even more people to struggle with their mental health.
Covid-19 meant having to promote lots of new online resources, as well as Holding Space’s ‘walk and talk’ events (socially distanced meetings for groups of six, at different places every Thursday). If the weather is bad, they simply ‘zoom and talk’.
What have you got from volunteering?
Chloe also urges anyone who can volunteer to do so, saying: “I have never volunteered before, but it has been good to do something I want to do, rather than something I need to do to earn a living. I’ve really enjoyed it. I love my work, but volunteering is a whole different feeling and sense of satisfaction.”
What happens next?
Even after furlough finishes, Chloe says she hopes she can continue volunteering. Perhaps not as many hours as she is able to now – but every little helps. According to Hansa Raja-Jones, founder of Holding Space, Chloe’s help has proved invaluable.
