Volunteer
There are many different types of roles that our amazing team of 400 volunteers fulfil. Roles include:
- Collecting food from supermarkets
- Sorting through donated food
- Packing food parcels
- Packing recipe bags
- Preparing fresh fruit and vegetable bags
- Delivering food parcels
- Making calls to clients as part of One Can Community Support
- Helping at the toddler group
- Helping at the clothes bank
- Supporting the free school meals programme
Collecting Food
Please click on photos for more information
Collecting food from supermarkets
Collection of food from schools and local businesses
Food Drives
Collecting food as a Street Hero
Processing Food Donations
Please click on photos for more information
Packing food parcels
Packing recipe bags
Preparing fresh fruit and veg
Sorting through donated food
Delivering Food Parcels
We continue to use the driver delivery model, introduced during COVID, as an effective way to distribute a high volume of parcels.
Drivers use their own vehicles and are therefore required to have a fully insured car with valid MOT. If you are hoping to volunteer as a driver, please check your insurance will cover you delivering parcels on our behalf.
Where possible, we try and allocate areas that are convenient to where our drivers live and drivers typically deliver parcels to 4-6 homes per shift.
Volunteer Shift Times
Most volunteers work a 2-hour shift at Duke Street during our core hours are 08:30am – 3:30pm. Mornings tend to be busier as we’re busy preparing food parcels for our drivers. We also have evening teams who continue to sort through donations.
Emptying customer supermarket collection cages can be carried out at any time whereas collection of supermarket surplus food needs to happen at specific times.
One Can Community Support
In 2021, we started a programme whereby a team of volunteers contacted clients. Initially, it was to gain feedback on food parcels but in more recent times, calls have provided an extremely useful opportunity to better understand clients’ situations and signpost to extra help. Volunteers make the calls from our offices above Hills Café in Micklefield. If you have a background in mental health, counselling, social support work etc and would like to join our small, dedicated team of volunteers to help with these calls, please get in touch communitysupport@onecantrust.org.uk
The Community Support Team has grown since the early days and now runs toddler groups, clothes banks, a homework club and other useful services. Please visit the Community Support page for more information.
Hills Café
Hills Café, a Community Interest Company located in the heart of Micklefield, provides a welcoming place to support local people in the community.
Click here to view the Hills Café page for volunteering opportunities.
How to apply to be a volunteer with One Can Trust
If you are interested in volunteering, please complete the online volunteer form and indicate your preferred times for helping us plus those tasks that you are keen to do.
We couldn’t run the operation without our amazing team of volunteers and we’d love to welcome you into that team.
Collecting food from supermarkets
We are very grateful to the many local supermarkets that generously donate their ‘surplus’ food that we are able to collect. Items are typically those that have limited time to their ‘Best Before’ dates or are slightly damaged (perhaps the packaging is ripped, for example).
One Can volunteers collect food from supermarkets (day or evening dependent on the supermarket) and deliver it to our warehouse in Duke Street.
Our volunteers also collect donations from the customer collection cages in supermarkets. These donations are a valuable source of food and we are hugely grateful to everyone in the local community who donates via these cages.
Collection of food from schools and local businesses
During Harvest and Christmas times in particular, many local schools, churches, businesses and other organisations very kindly collect food for us. These collections tend to be more ad hoc and suit volunteers who don’t want an ongoing commitment.
Food Drives
Supermarket food drives are proving to be extremely valuable as our food stocks dip with increasing demand. Volunteers simply hand out lists of ‘Wants and Needs’ to customers as they enter the store and collect the donations as they leave. Volunteer shifts are typically a couple of hours at the weekend when footfall is greatest.
We are also keen to work with local companies who may wish to meet a CSR objective and volunteer with us. One such company, Ultra, organised our first Friday food drive at a local major supermarket. The day was incredibly successful and Guy Hayes, a Supply Chain Manager for Ultra said, ‘My team and I thoroughly enjoyed the day and found it incredibly rewarding’.
Collecting food as a Street Hero
Packing food parcels
We pack food parcels according to the size of the household and take into consideration any dietary requirements or allergies. A volunteer food nutritionist designed the parcel contents and we pack specific items in accordance with his recommendations.
Packing recipe bags
Sometimes we have unusual food items donated to us, particularly surplus food from allotments. To prevent the possibility of food not being used if recipients are unfamiliar with it, we provide recipe bags that contain a recipe card plus all the ingredients required to make a dish from the donated items.
Preparing fresh fruit and vegetable bags
Food parcels typically contain ‘ambient’ tins and packets and we believe it’s very important to also provide fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs and bread. We therefore offer and provide a ‘basic’ fruit and veg bag. If possible, bags contain onions, carrots, bananas, fruit and broccoli plus any other fruit and vegetables that are donated.
Sorting through donated food
Our warehouse teams are the ‘front line’ checkers when food comes into the warehouse. They play a vital role to ensure food is within date, tins are not damaged or rusty and items are suitable (we don’t supply alcohol or homemade food in our food parcels).
