News from Camden Jobtrain

Volunteering Opportunities launched

03 November 2009

Prime Minister Gordon Brown now wants all the young people to be active volunteers. Camden Jobtrain always supported volunteering and now LSC has launched volunteering as part of E2E experience. CJt's first case study was Amira Abdulrazak - Childcare Learner:

"Some of the kids are very rebellious and I didn’t know how to deal with them at first and needed to have a lot of contact with my youth development worker. Now, I have learnt to be patient with them and try to understand their point of view. I have learnt how to give them useful rather than pointless advice.”

 

Amira is studying childcare at Camden Jobtrain. She volunteers as a youth worker at MBS youth club (Marylebone Bangladeshi Society), as their only Somali volunteer. She assists with the 13-19 Girl’s Sessions on Saturdays between 2-5pm. She chats with them about Health and Safety awareness, knife crime, some family issues and school problems. The girls play table tennis or Wii, pool, fuzz ball, watch TV or use computers.

She helps to organise and participates in day trips, for example to Thorpe Park, Ice Skating, bowling and to cinemas. Her best friend was already working there and when she joined as a volunteer. Amira finds this “fun and enjoyable, and finds it rewarding to help with problems that the young girls don’t discuss with others.”

 

She explains, “It is nice to just be around girls. I don’t see this as just work, but rather going out with a bunch of girls that I get on with. I have definitely built up on teambuilding, management skills. I have learnt how to behave professionally. I am hoping that by the end of the year they will promote me to be a paid youth worker."

 

 

Her supervisor describes her communication as fantastic and says she is very observant and is able to highlight concerns to management. She is described as being a computer genie. He says, “She loves working with young people!”

 

 

Amira reflects that, “It is good pathway for someone who doesn’t really want to go straight to work. It is a good start; I am not sitting at a desk all day. I get to go out and having a good time whilst I am volunteering. I recommend volunteering. I get a lot out of it, including useful skills for other placements and my future career. It is the kind of job where you can learn so many things.”