That’s a wrap! As we bid farewell to the 2019 camp season, we turn a bit mushy at the thought of the volunteers who have helped make our camps possible this year.
Hankies at the ready.
It may be another 6 months until Volunteers’ Week is celebrated in June – but that doesn’t mean you need to save all our thank you’s until then. We want to recognise our volunteers for all the awesome things they do all year round for Over The Wall, whether that’s being gunged for the fifth camp in a row, allowing campers to dress them up in anything (and we mean anything) they find appropriate, acting as a landing board for a liberal scattering of glitter or keeping a camper company at lunch because he or she feels somehow isolated, shy or a little disconnected.
Our volunteers are the embodiment of camp: they are empowering, caring, fun and as reason dictates, just a little bit crazy.
So, in the spirit of year-round gratitude, our new Thank a Volunteer portal can now be found here, and we want to encourage as many people as possible to pass on their thanks our volunteers so that they truly feel the impact of their amazing actions.
Here’s just a small selection of the comments we’ve received so far:
“They made it seriously fun and exciting with their enthusiasm and spark”
“My son was inspired by them to learn how to play guitar, today he has self-taught himself how to play guitar”
“Made me feel more confident and able to do things I would have struggled with or been afraid of before, always made me laugh and made the Camp a happy place to be.”
If you’re already basking in the Christmas spirit you could always get ahead of the game and send them an OTW Christmas card – simply add their name and send to volunteering@otw.org.uk – we’ll do our best to forward them on.
What volunteers helped us achieve this year:
- Volunteers took up 650 places at our camps in 2019 ensuring that they ran smoothly, that our campers felt safe and had fun.
- 13 volunteers raised £6,385 (£7,114 including Gift Aid).
- Our volunteers supported an incredible 1015 campers across the UK through our 14 camps.
- 137 volunteers from Simplyhealth, Itsu, Takeda, Kenwood, Yoti, Abercrombie & Fitch, GSK and Hasbro took part in our corporate volunteering days, ensuring our camps were set-up and ready for our campers and delivered workshops on exciting topics such as computer coding, rocket building, flag-making and product design.
- 1,000+ moments of #mischiefandmagic
We launched ‘Thank a Volunteer’ in response to the overwhelming amount of positive messaging on social media wanting to thank our volunteers, if you’d like to add your name, hit the button below.
