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Solidarity Sports
When Solidarity Sports was established in 2007, we aimed to engage children in sports--a fun, accessible way to bring kids together and promote good health and wellness. Solidarity Sports has harnessed the transformative power of play to nurture disadvantaged children recovering from complex trauma. We support children's healing through sports, healthy eating, arts, educational trips, mentorship…
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Description

We are a charity that harnesses the transformative power of play and exercise to help vulnerable children recover from complex trauma. Our goal is to nurture the confidence of every child we work with and develop valuable life skills to help them reach their full potential. 

Volunteers will support children at Solidarity Sports projects during school holidays. In practice this may be running through playgrounds with our children, supporting them as they try bouldering for the first time, ice-skating, and many more fun activities. Volunteers will build a positive, trusting relationship with our children, and make them feel special and valued at all times during our projects.  

During this October half-term (28th Oct - 1st Nov, Mon-Fri), we are bringing our children to various venues across London for exciting day trips! 

We have projects every school holiday, in Christmas, Easter, Summer, and Half-Terms, Monday to Friday, from approximately 10am-4pm.

Location: West London (outside Shepherd’s Bush, Hammersmith, Earl’s Court, or Notting Hill Gate underground stations)
The volunteer coordinator will contact you with details of meeting point.

Reimbursement: Travel is reimbursed up to £15 and lunch up to £4.50 with receipts provided.

If you are interested for further opportunities, during the school term we also have after school clubs running every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 3:30-5:30pm. 

Duties

Your role is to provide support to our children during project activities, e.g. encouraging them to learn a new skill, cheering them on, playing with them. 

Your team leader will assign you 1-2 children as partners for the day. We maintain a good ratio of 1 adult : 2 children so we can give our children as much attention and care as possible.

We ask that you bring your ENERGY, passion and enthusiasm to volunteering! Please also take initiative to help out with various tasks.

Who will the volunteers be working with?
Most of our children are referred to us by social services or a women's refuge, and many are refugees. They have gone through significant trauma and adverse life events despite their young age. Some of our children also have special educational needs.
Training
We have an onboarding process where we go through logistics of volunteering and answer any questions. We have a condensed safeguarding policy that all volunteers must read, along with an onboarding document with frequently asked questions. We hold a volunteer onboarding training every few months for our new volunteers to learn more about the charity, and important safeguarding points (e.g. responding to signs of abuse).

Time commitment

This is a very flexible commitment – you can do 1 day in this week, 2 days, or all 5 days if you’re keen!

We do ask however that volunteers commit to the 10am-4pm time slot, as you will be paired with 1-2 children during this project, and if you are not able to stay for that amount of time there will not be enough volunteers to adequately supervise the children (there should be at 1 volunteer:2 children ratio at all times).

Here are our upcoming projects dates, please note them in your diary if you would like to volunteer during other holidays:
October half-term -- 28th Oct -1st Nov
Christmas -- 23rd, 27th, 30th Dec; 2nd, 3rd Jan
February half-term -- 17th-21st Feb
Easter -- 7th-11th, 14th-18th Apr
May half-term -- 27th-30th May
Summer -- 21st-25th Jul, 28th Jul-1st Aug, 4th-8th Aug, 11th-15th Aug, 18th-22nd Aug

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UCL Departments

This organisation is one of our community partner organisations.

Like all volunteer recruiters we work with, they have signed up to our service standards, agreeing to abide by our policy on partnership working to keep you safe and supported whilst you volunteer.

You’ll never be out of pocket for volunteering through us – with in-London travel expenses to and from your volunteering guaranteed.

In addition, the team here at Students’ Union UCL Volunteering Service is here to support you throughout your volunteering journey – you can get in touch with us at any time.