Would you like to make a difference to New Scots families in your community? Would you like to help tackle Child Poverty? We have the right opportunity for you! Volunteering Matters is now recruiting volunteer mentors to help build resilience and aspirations to move parents towards and enter employment. While our staff will be on hand to help you provide employability specific support to parents, your role as a mentor will be focused on developing additional skills and overcoming personal barriers to facilitate their entry into the job market. More specifically, you might be supporting your mentee with confidence building, public speaking, time management, social skills, proactiveness, future plans and aspirations, accessing further education courses or work placements, additional services or local groups. No previous experience or knowledge required, just a willingness to make a difference to families in your community. We especially welcome applications from mentors that have direct or indirect lived experience of any of the mentioned barriers and struggles and feel ready to provide friendly guidance to someone who is on their employment journey. You will be ideally a flexible, patient and reliable individual with strong people skills. Before you start, we will invite you to attend training, aimed at providing you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to carry out your mentoring role safely and knowingly. You will also have multiple opportunities to meet with the mentor project worker in 1:1 meetings and go through any questions or doubts you may have before you start.

Give the gift of an hour a week, by becoming a Mentor to a Young Person aged 14-25 in West Lothian. It could be life changing for you both! Would you like to support a young person on their journey to gaining new skills and experience, becoming more self-confident and achieving their goals? If the answer is yes, we would love to hear from you. Why mentoring? Mentoring is at the heart of what we do here at ProjectScotland and we offer every young person we support, the opportunity to be matched with a volunteer mentor. We are searching for people in and around West Lothian who are able to offer one hour of their time once a week or fortnight for up to 12 months to help transform the life of someone else aged 14-25. The young people we work with all face different challenges in their lives such as poor school attendance, poor mental health, low confidence and self esteem, lack of employment opportunities, limited English skills or other life barriers and challenges. Some of the young people we support have been involved in negative behaviour. As a volunteer mentor, you could support your mentee with whatever is important to them. This could be: goal setting; identifying interests and strengths; confidence building; helping to establish a routine; support to explore job, training and further education opportunities; social connections; or just someone consistent to talk to and check in with to see how they are. The support you can offer is invaluable and can be life changing. How does it work? We will ask you to take part in our safe recruitment process, such as completing a PVG check, before we offer you some training which will prepare you and set you up to be a great mentor! After that, we offer lots of ongoing support, access to guides and resources, plus the chance to join our wonderful network of volunteer mentors across Edinburgh and the Lothians. You are "matched" to one young person and meet with them once a week or fortnight for around one hour . Matches can last anywhere from 3-12 months, or sometimes longer, depending upon the relationship and the needs of the mentee What’s in it for you? • Help transform your mentee’s life • Develop communication and interpersonal skills e.g. coaching, motivating others, adaptability • Gain transferable skills and experience volunteering with disadvantaged people • Participate in regular support and training • Meet new people, connect and have fun! • Learn about yourself and gain a sense of achievement supporting others • Learn more about your community and the challenges that people can face . We are looking for mentors from diverse experiences and backgrounds. We aren't looking for specific qualifications, skills or experience- just a passion to support a young person and an hour to spare. Our current mentors are; stay at home parents/carers, students, retired, professionals, entrepreneurs and everything in between. We'd love to here from you, express your interest today!

Somebody Cares is a local charity who furnish homes, provide clothing, baby equipment, toys and food parcels to those in need within our city and shire. Through referral from many local support services, charities, social workers and the local councils, clients are able to access our services completely free of charge. By demonstrating empathy and support, our aim is to provide a helping hand to those who are facing challenging times, by offering hope and providing then with essential and practicable items which they otherwise couldn’t afford to purchase. Our greatest wish is that after receiving our support our clients can gain confidence, flourish and begin to escape the poverty trap. We work with men, woman and children from many different backgrounds, and our services are accessed by many support services including Aberdeen City Council, Cornhill Hospital, Grampians Women’s Aid, Barnardo’s, Children’s 1st, Turning Point Scotland, Langstane Housing, Shmu, Children and Family Services, Social Bite, Drugs and Alcohol Awareness and many medical professionals. We fund our charitable work by selling some of our donated items at our very busy retail megastore at Hazeldene Road, Aberdeen. (Old Dobbie’s building). The Megastore has many gems and bargains and has a strong local clientele who visit the store on a regular basis. We are looking for volunteers to help us sort through many of the donated items ready for sale. We are flexible with hours and days and are looking for enthusiastic people with a heart for making a difference to join our friendly team. A fantastic opportunity to help. All volunteers make a real difference and are greatly appreciated. For further details please contact Alison Topley, Chief Operating Officer at email: volunteer@somebodycaresscotland.org or telephone: 01224 460700.

At Counselling Care we provide free Counselling to the community of Skye and Lochalsh. Although we are largely trauma orientated we provide specialist counselling in many areas. Our Counsellors have varied specialist knowledge and we are usually able to help with any issue that presents to us. In order to provide our services for free we are completely reliant on our team of able and willing volunteer Counsellors. We need qualified (to Diploma Level) Counsellors who are members of the BACP, COSCA, or their equivalent who can spare 2-3 hours a week to work with our clients. All individuals will have been assessed. Whilst we are looking for people to work online, over the phone or face to face, we especially need those who are willing to work in a Face to Face capacity. Supervision will be paid for and travelling expenses (within reason) will be honoured. You can also expect to be included in training provided for our Counsellors. You will be part of a friendly team consisting of paid, volunteer and student Counsellors, there are regular team meetings and communication with others within the organisation so you will not be alone.