Joanne, Aged 20
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Hello my name is Joanne Lewis, I am 20 years old and work as a Community Volunteer at Walton Lane Police Station.
I began my role as a Community Volunteer back in September 2008, when a vacancy became available at Walton Lane Police Station for Community Volunteers to undertake various roles throughout the force.
Some of the Community Volunteer roles that are available could range from:
Helping out on the front desk
Helping witnesses or victims of crime
Leafleting crime prevention information across Liverpool North
Monitoring traffic speed in response to Community concerns
I volunteer as part of the Roads Policing Unit, which is based at Walton Lane and my role as a Community Volunteer is to keep the computer systems updated on a weekly basis. This means that I have to log numerous files onto the computer before allocating them to various different officers throughout Liverpool North.
I have learned a lot from working with such a dedicated group of people, over the past 8 and a half months since I started with Merseyside Police.
Hopefully by me putting in all that I can in the way of my working hours at Walton Lane, I should in the next 12 to 18 months be given a full time job with them which means I will then be getting paid for what I do now as a Community Volunteer.
When I first heard about volunteering for 16 - 25 year olds, I sat and thought, “is this the right thing for me or should I wait until the right opportunity becomes available for me to go straight into paid work”. But now that I am actually volunteering for an organisation, which I have wanted to be part of for so long, I will continue with my voluntary duties with Merseyside Police until the time is right for me to go into paid work.
During my spare time if I am not working at Walton Lane, I also volunteer for five other charities. Some of the charity work includes bag packing at my local supermarkets or street collections throughout Liverpool City Centre.
I feel that volunteering is a great way to encourage people to do something for their community and also to gain lots of experience along the way.
Finally life is too short to sit around and think about what you want to do in the future, so my advice to people out there between the age of 16 - 25 is to take every opportunity that there is at the moment as they may never come along again.
