Volunteering
At Birkhill House CIC, we recognise the value of volunteers. The more help we have with day-to-day running tasks, the more time is freed up for us to programme plan and source funding in order to enhance the crafting, animal assisted activity and horticultural offerings here.
Our aim is to provide clear benefit to the volunteers who help with our animal care, crafting preparations, gardening and general smallholding upkeep. Being outside, communing with the animals, lending creative flair in support of the programme here, helping to keep spaces clean, coming up with storage solutions and repairing tools and equipment are all ways to engage and take away a sense of pride and accomplishment.
In terms of animal care, weekday mornings are good times for us to help train volunteers. This is when our animal care assistant is busiest. Otherwise, we tend to keep jobs to Mondays (9-11am).
And to all of our past and current volunteers, thank you for helping out At Birkhill House CIC! There is so much to do here and so much that we are hoping to give back to the community and to those who might benefit most from our animals and activities.
A typical morning...
The jobs here are numerous and varied but a typical Monday helping with the animals may look something like this:
- Arrive and feed the peafowl and chickens
- Collect the eggs
- Help our animal care assistant corral the alpacas into the feeding pens and give them each a scoop of hard feed
- Sweep the barn & tidy
- Share a cup of tea with other volunteers
- Feed scraps to the goats
- Groom the cats currently in our rescue & rehome accommodation
Or you may feel more at home in the crafting workshop spaces, in which case your morning may consist more of sorting fleece, tidying the work stations, packing crafting kits and preparing materials for an upcoming workshop.
If gardening is more your thing, we have a polytunnel and outdoor beds where we grow fruit and vegetables that we use for snacks in our workshops and sell on our market stall, donating surplus to our local food larders. There is also a lot of weeding and maintenance work to be done in our natural dye garden.
At Birkhill House CIC is proud to be a Saltire Awards Group Administrator. The Saltire Awards are the Scottish Government's way of celebrating, recognising and rewarding the commitment, contribution and achievements of young volunteers in Scotland. Young people, aged between 12 and 25, can gain nationally recognised certificates, signed by Scottish Government Ministers, for the different amounts of volunteering they do. Find out more about the Saltire Awards here.
There are many organisations, groups and schools that support young people to take part in a range of volunteering activities in the community. Although it is important for young people to be supported and encouraged to sign up for a My Saltire account and to take ownership of their own volunteering, this is not always possible. As a Group Administrator, At Birkhill House CIC can help support young volunteers to gain the recognition they deserve.
Further Information
If you would like to find out more about volunteering At Birkhill House, you can find our Volunteering Agreement, Role Descriptions and Application form below.
