How long have you been volunteering at FareShare and why did you decide to start?
Gareth: Two years. I was looking for an outlet for us to make good use of our time, having had the good fortune to retire early from full time employment. We retired on the Friday and on the Saturday morning I came across FareShare through typing ‘volunteer van driver’ on the internet. I then filled out an application and the rest is history.
Sue: Also, when we worked in full time employment, we worked closely together, so we knew that working together was never going to be a problem. When we started looking for something, it made sense to do something together, especially as we were in the middle of a pandemic. Going out and seeing people obviously wasn’t an option, so it kept us busy and active.
What does your role involve?
Gareth: Primarily we both applied for the van driver and driver’s assistant role, but we are involved in much more. We call it a job, we know its volunteering, but we see it as job. FareShare is a professional organisation, and we very much consider ourselves to be ambassadors of FareShare, the daily face with the charities and community groups. We take the responsibilities as equally as we did with paid employment.
Sue: Gareth gets heavily involved with repairing the vans. Both of our backgrounds are in automotives, but Gareth worked in the body repair sector all his life so when vans get dents and things like that, he tends to put them back together which obviously is a huge benefit to the organisation.
Gareth: We both worked in insurance claims, so we have a broad understanding of keeping vehicles road worthy in a cost-effective way. This was an element I was keen to support FareShare Yorkshire with, helping to maintain the vans as I know they are being driven by multiple people. When a van is not available it put an incredible amount of pressure on the organisation. We appreciate that brand awareness is important and we know we have limited funding to repair things, it just gives us another opportunity to utilise our skills and provide a benefit.
Sue: I help to allocate some of the foods that might be harder to redistribute so that it doesn’t go to waste. I make it my mission to find people who will have it. I also help with providing recipe ideas to the Community Food Members for ingredients that people may not be familiar with such as celeriac and fennel.
Gareth: I also get involved with DIY jobs around the warehouse. They’ll come to me and say ‘what do you think of this’ which usually means can you help me out with…
How do you find working together as a team?
Gareth: Sue and I have worked together for 12 years. We worked in full time employment together, both in the same department. I was responsible for body shop supply and our expert engineering function. Sue was responsible for the customer service experience at those body shops and for the daily engagement with the repair centres.
Sue: The answer is we are a terrible team
Gareth: Many of the CFM’s we have been to regularly haven’t realised we are a husband-and-wife team. We keep our professional and personal lives separate on the day.
What do you enjoy most about volunteering with FareShare?
Sue: Strangely not getting paid. That element of when you work for a living, what you get paid gives you your value. When you volunteer, the appreciation that you get gives you your value. You can also go on holiday when you choose, and never have a load of emails waiting for you. It’s just a very different mindset with volunteering than it is from paid employment.
Gareth: I would agree. When I speak to people about what we do, they wonder why we want to get back into work if we have retired. I say it’s because I can and because I want to. It’s not because I need to, or that we need the income.
Have you learnt any skills since volunteering with FareShare?
Sue: Manual lifting and handling.
Gareth: Food hygiene training. I am about to commence some forklift truck training too. The understanding of the charity has been a massive eye opener for both of us to what food poverty looks like in this country and how it is supported. The sheer number of companies that are involved in this operation that you don’t hear about on the news. The scale of it all is just enormous.
How has volunteering made a difference your life?
Sue: We would have been very lost without it during the pandemic because who retires in the middle of a pandemic. The plan was that you retire and go on a massive holiday and then you come back and think I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. Obviously, we couldn’t do any of that, so it kept us busy and allowed us to leave the house which was good. It’s also given us a lot of structure as we still have a lot of downtime to ourselves. It presents the realisation that you do need a purpose in life. You do need a reason to get up every morning.
Gareth: It’s kept us active. We are reasonably fit; we could be fitter.
Sue: We are fitter than we were.
Gareth: We dread to think what we might have been like if we hadn’t had done this. I’m doing nearly as many miles as I did in my full-time employment, it’s just the new desk is a dashboard of a Peugeot boxer van.
What has been your memorable experience so far?
Sue: The whole thing really.
Gareth: Seeing how our experience has evolved. We initially did two days, from 8am – 12pm and then we would go home, until we started to build rapport with the volunteer managers. Our latest volunteer manager has been very engaging. Everyone at FareShare is appreciative. Every day that we go in and leave, there is an appreciation that we are there. It is genuine and not just ticking a box.
What would you say to someone who was thinking about joining FareShare as a volunteer?
Sue: Absolutely do it.
Gareth: Do it.
FareShare are looking for more volunteers to help get good-to-eat food to people who need it most. To become a FareShare food hero visit: https://fareshareuk.com/volunteering
