Volunteer of the Month – February

This month’s volunteer is the wonderful Stella Pritchard! Stella has gone above and beyond any of our expectations for volunteers and we cannot thank her enough.

Stella’s role as a volunteer is ‘charity shop volunteer’. Stella works every Wednesday at our charity shop based in Herne Bay, putting out stock and greeting customers with a smile. Alongside all the hard work Stella does at the charity shop she also regularly helps at some of our events, helping to run stalls and games. In addition to this, Stella offers to help in our donation sorting area in Herne when there are piles of donations coming in.

Stella has been a volunteer for 12 years. In these 12 years of volunteering Stella has experienced lots of change and the amazing things our foundation can do.

Upon reflection of her 12 years, we asked Stella what her favourite memory on volunteering was, She said: “When I first started my grandson was 8 and he used to love coming along to the charity shop with me, he was an amazing seller!” Stella went on to add that “this is one of her fondest memories of her and her grandson”.

We went on to discuss why Stella volunteers for Strode and she said, “I count my blessings every day that my family is healthy and in a good position so if sparing a little of my time allows the clients and residents at Strode to have better life, I will carry on doing this”.

The last thing we asked Stella was what advice would she give to anyone wanting to start volunteering, in answer to this Stella said, “Keep it up, we don’t volunteer for ourselves we volunteer for the residents to help make their lives better, so it is a commitment and stick to it”.

Stella is a Strode superstar and we could not continue providing the care we do without this wonderful woman!

Thank you, Stella, for all your continued hard work, we couldn’t run our charity shop smoothly without you and your support.

If you are interested in volunteering like Stella and sharing your spare time with us, then please either call 01227 373292 or email volunteering@strodepark.org.uk