Become a Guy's Gift Volunteer

As James H Doolittle states - “There’s nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.”

Why do people decide to volunteer?
Many of the wonderful Guy’s Gift volunteers join us as they want to “make a difference” or “share their experiences” or even “give back to a charity that supported their family”. All of these reasons demonstrate that these special people have strong and powerful hearts, with a desire to help.

Our volunteers may work directly with families, they promote us as Community Ambassadors, they deliver school and hospital resource packs and even act as trustees of the charity. Every one of them makes a huge impact on the lives of children and young people who have experienced the death of someone special to them.

We are always looking for new volunteers to join our growing team. If you also have a strong and powerful heart, with the desire to help bereaved children and young people in your local area, please do take a look at our volunteer recruitment page. You could join our team and be a fundraiser, walk leader or even group support volunteer. You may have a different voluntary role in mind, if so, do let us know. We are open to suggestions!

In order to join our team of volunteers, we do ask you to attend one of our induction days. The next one is on the 13th April 2024 and will start at 9:30am in Warwick.

If you would like to find out more about our volunteering opportunities and find out how to join our nextinduction day, please email me at volunteering@guysgift.co.uk.

Gregg Rowley memorial rugby match

On 4th February I headed up to Manor Park RFC’s ground to watch a rugby match organized by Rachel, in memory of her husband, Gregg, who died in 2022. Gregg was a Police Inspector and a life-long rugby player, fan and member at Manor Park, and so it was fitting that the memorial match was between Manor Park and a West Midlands Police XV. It was a lovely touch to see Gregg and Rachel’s children, Millie and Ethan lead the sides out for kick off. Both teams were made up of friends, colleagues and team-mates of Gregg’s and it was a fitting tribute to Gregg that both sides fielded full teams with plenty of substitutes keen to get on the pitch and play their part.

The match was played in great spirit, with a close-fought first half finishing with the teams very evenly matched. The second half saw Manor Park, who possibly had the advantage of local knowledge when they played up the slope in the first half, gradually using both the slope and the wind to their advantage, against some tiring policemen, in the second half. Manor Park eased ahead, ending with a comfortable win. The score mattered little, as everyone enjoyed the afternoon, before the teams retired to the clubhouse accompanied by the sizeable crowd to enjoy an evening of good company, food, music and the odd drink, in memory of Gregg.

Rachel organised a great tribute to Gregg and the number of players, as well as those watching high-lighted the esteem Gregg was held in. The event also raised a significant sum of money, which was shared between three charities. A donation of £550 was made to Guy’s Gift.

Thank you Rachel, Millie and Ethan for holding a great event and fundraising for Guy’s Gift.

Group support sessions in Coventry

Our first group support sessions of 2024 are begining this afternoon in Willenhall.

Group support is a great way of helping children and young people recognise that they’re not alone with their feelings and emotions when someone important has died. Groups give the opportunity to meet other children and young people who understand. It can be incredible heplful for children and young people to meet with peers alongside our qualified and experienced team of staff and volunteers to talk about what has happened and to find strategies to deal with those tricky feelings and emotions.

You can see what one young person shared about some of the activities she did at groups sessions, in the video below.

If you’d like to find out about upcoming bereavement support groups in your area, send us an email to info@guysgift.co.uk

Bereavement support packs for local hospital

We’re always looking at how we can reach more bereaved children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire. We know that whilst some children and young people benefit from direct support with us, many more benefit from having access to self support/support to support initiatives. In 2019 we began a project to provide bereavement resource packs into local school, with the first packs heading out at the start of the pandemic (good timing?). We’ve been working on a project to provide similar resources into local hospitals, with the key difference being that the pack would remain with the child or young person, rather than being a shared resource.

Back in May 2023, the wonderful people at Leamington Spa Rotary did a fundraiser, which has provided the cash for our pilot project. Now, some of our fabulous volunteers at EA Games in Southam are preparing the packs, ready to deliver to Warwick Hospital later this month. We’re hopeful that we can extend this project to other local hospitals later in 2024.

We take this opportunity to do a shout out to those brilliant members of our community who put time, energy and cash into supporting this project. This really is a great demonstration of how our local community pull together to ‘do good’ for those who need it. Thank you to each and every one of you!

Giving Tuesday 2023

We couldn’t make a post about Giving Tuesday without acknowledging the wonderful support and donations that our local community have made over the last year. We’re always grateful for the support you show Guy’s Gift, and the difference you make to children and families across Coventry and Warwickshire.

Giving Tuesday is a global day of ‘doing good’. It’s a reasonably new tradition which originated in the USA following on from Thanksgiving and Black Friday.  It’s always on Tuesday straight after Thanksgiving.

Giving Tuesday can take on many forms, and it’s an opportunity for you to think about what ‘doing good’ means to you.

In its simplest form, you might consider making a donation to charity. As a small and local charity, you can be assured that if you donate to Guy’s Gift, your donation makes its way directly to the core of what we do – providing support for bereaved children and young people.

Other ways you might decide to show your support could be volunteering your time and/or expertise. We are always looking for volunteers to join our wonderful volunteer team, and if you’d like to find out more about opportunities you can get in touch with us on volunteering@guysgift.co.uk. You can also sign up to our monthly newsletter which keeps you up to date with volunteering opportunities.

Perhaps awareness campaigning is more your thing? Every time you tell a friend about Guy’s Gift, or like/comment/share a post on our social media pages, that means that another family might know about what we can do to support them. Afterall, bereavement support isn’t something which is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. When the unfortunate time comes that a family find they could do with support for their children following the death of someone important, they may not know where to look. Word of mouth is a wonderful way to make sure that families know about what support is available when they need it.

Maybe you’d like to hold a fundraising event for Guy’s Gift. This is a wonderful way to not only fundraise and be able to make valued donations, but also another great way to let people know about us.

We LOVE hearing from you when you’re supporting Guy’s Gift. Big or small, shout about it and let us know!

Work with us!

We have an opportunity to join our team as a Groups Co-Ordinator & Community Based Counsellor.

This role will focus on organising and running therapeutic group support for children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire. Part of the role will also be to provide 1:1 counselling/support within Coventry.

If this sounds like something you’d like to do, check out the job listing here: www.guysgift.co.uk/work-with-us or send us an email to info@guysgift.co.uk

Lantern Event 2023

We’re all looking forward to the Guy’s Gift Lantern Event 2023.

Invitiations will be heading out via email this week. If you’ve not had yours, please get in touch (info@guysgift.co.uk) and we’ll make sure you have all the info you need.

This year the event will take pace on Sunday 10th December.

We're recruiting

We have an exciting opportunity for someone to join the team as Volunteer Co-Ordinator.

This role is 1.5 days per week, and invovles working with our fantastic volunteer team.

Find out more: https://www.guysgift.co.uk/work-with-us

Community support from Dunelm in Rugby

We were very excited to hear from Abi at Dunelm in Rugby recently, to let us know that Guy’s Gift have been put forward for their Delivering Joy Christmas project. If you’re not familiar with this project, you’ll find a Christmas Tree inside the Rugby branch of Dunelm. This Christmas Tree will contain lots of tags giving details of things local charities (Guy’s Gift included) need at the moment. As a customer, you can select one or more of the tags and purchase the items needed. Once you have the items the charity needs, you then drop them off at a collection point inside Dunelm. We then receive the items before Christmas, ready to use in support sessions with children and young people.

The tree is now up in store, so if you’re in the area we’d love it if you could head in to store and select one or more of our tags and donate the items listed.

We can’t tell you how much of a difference things like this make to small charities like Guy’s Gift, and every single donation makes a difference to the support we provide for children and young people dealing with the death of someone important to them.

Thank you to all involved in this brilliant project, and we look forward to seeing the donations at the end of the year.

New address

We’ve got a new address!

If you need to send something throught the post, please make sure it heads to our new address:

Guy’s Gift
Chandos Business Centre
87 Warwick Street
Leamington Spa
CV32 4RJ

All other ways to keep in touch with us remain the same.