Celebrating the city’s volunteers

To mark this year’s Volunteers' Week, we’ve been highlighting the enormous benefits volunteering bring to Brighton & Hove.

From working with charities and hospitals, home visits, representing tenant groups to leading healthwalks, tidying up the city’s open spaces and welcoming visitors, volunteers carry out a huge range of vital roles in the city.

Volunteering can also help improve health and wellbeing, quality of life, and increase skills, experience and employment prospects.

As a small token of appreciation, dozens of volunteers from a variety of community projects in the city enjoyed tea and a bird’s eye view of the city at a celebration on the i360 on Tuesday to mark Volunteers Week.

Our film features volunteers from Independent Visitors, the Volunteer Home Aphasia Befriending Scheme (embedded within Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust’s Brighton & Hove Community Neuro Rehabilitation Team), Healthwalks, Lunch Positive, and Age UK Brighton & Hove talking about why they volunteer

According to national figures, volunteering contributed an estimated £22.6bn to the UK economy in 2015. In 2016/17, 19.8 million people in the UK volunteered formally at least once a year and 11.9 million (22%) of people did so at least once a month.

To find out more about volunteering opportunities in Brighton & Hove, visit www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/volunteer or www.bhcommunityworks.org.uk/volunteer.