Volunteering with Cancer Research Wales: Ellie’s Story
Ellie Jose has been volunteering for Cancer Research Wales in our Fundraising and Events team. To mark Volunteers’ Week, Ellie is sharing her story with us to explain how she enjoyed her volunteering experience
Events management
‘I’m Ellie. I’m from Llantwit Major. I’ve got an events management background and I’ve been helping out one day a week with the Fundraising and Events team to gain experience for my future career.
“I’ve taken some of the load off the Events and Fundraising team, because they’re a small team, so there are lots of jobs that I can help out with whilst they’re doing other things. I’ve been doing some of the stock taking stuff and customer service stuff, like sending parcels out to our runners and writing the little notes for our customers.”
Making a huge difference
“I’ve helped with sorting out the storeroom. We took everything out in boxes, audited it, stock-managed it and now the storeroom is far more functional. For example, we unpacked all the stuff we took to the event over the weekend and we did it in five minutes because everything has its place, everyone knows where things belong and it’s all neat and kept well and I did most of it on my own, to be fair.
“The feedback I’ve had is that what I’ve done has made a huge difference and it makes everything else quicker and we can be more efficient and effective with the time and I’m told it’s made everyone’s life a lot easier.”
Gaining practical experience
“Volunteering with Cancer Research Wales has helped me because COVID hit during my degree, so unfortunately I didn’t get as much practical experience as I’d have liked so the whole point of this has been to fill in that skill gap and building on the experience that I have so being able to shadow Nic (Nic Clarke - Cancer Research Wales’s Events Manager), whose got so much experience has been really helpful and I hope to be able to continue doing that.”
Helping people
“I’ve felt like I’m making a difference and I like feeling I’m helping people as much as I can and cancer has affected my family quite a lot so feeling like I’m making a difference is great. I do feel like I am gaining insight for my future career. I like being busy as well, so doing as much as I can and being proactive with it, I enjoy that too.”
Helping me get a job
“Volunteering is definitely going to help me with getting a job because I’ll have those examples and experiences to draw upon during interviews. You might be the right person, but you do need to have those examples to show that you can achieve those things and I definitely think I’ll be able to do that with my time here. It’s not just helping in the office - I’ve also helped on the event days and the setting up and the breaking down and having all the interactions with the customers and also dealing with stock stuff, so it’s very varied and lots of examples of stuff I can draw upon in future interviews hopefully.”