Volunteer of the Month – January

January has been a month of recruiting new volunteers but for this month we have a lovely volunteer who has been volunteering for Strode for four years, since January 2020.

Introducing Jane Pottle. Jane is our Volunteer of the Month for January 2024; we would like to say a huge thank you to Jane for all that she does!

Jane’s role as a volunteer is ‘sorting shed volunteer’. Within this role Jane sorts through all the donations for our charity shop, sorting them into what can be sold in our Herne Bay Charity Shop, what can go online onto Vinted or eBay or what can’t be sold we rag – which still gets us a little bit of cash.

When she’s not volunteering for us, Jane helps run a local micro pub ‘Cooper Pottle’ who regularly hold events to raise money for Strode Park.

Jane really loves her time with Strode. She said: “I volunteer for Strode because of my connection with the Cooper Pottle, when this connection was established, I realised that it is a local charity that could really use my help. Also, the grounds are beautiful, and I feel mesmerised when coming each week.”

Jane, a former school teacher at Herne Bay High, turns up every Tuesday to help sort out our wonderful donations. She added: “I used to be a school teacher and I think it comes back to the duty of care, I signed up to a role to help people and even if it is a tough week, I still want to turn up to make that difference. My favourite thing about volunteering for Strode is all the different people I get to meet whether they are other volunteers, people donating, they all have different stories and something different to offer and I love hearing about it all and helping them all with whatever it is there donating and why they are donating.”

We asked Jane what one word she would use to describe her time as a volunteer. “I couldn’t just choose one word so have two,” she said.  “Rewarding in every single aspect possible but also, I would use the word ‘time’ because everyone has time – it only has to be one morning, one afternoon, an hour here and there and it really does make all the difference.”

Thank you, Jane, 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 and sharing your spare time with us, then please either call 01227 373292 or email volunteering@strodepark.org.uk