Volunteering with Reach4wrd

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Currently, most of our opportunities to volunteer and work with Reach4ward arise from our young people's project, CLOUD in Hebden Bridge, though there are other opportunities when we deliver larger one-off events.

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Since we began CLOUD in 2018, we have continued to grow and thrive, delivering services to young people aged 11-18 and including a weekly youth club at Machpelah Mill on New Road Hebden Bridge. 

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Initially, and with a lot of enthusiasm, just three volunteers and a young people’s core group we met in various venues around Hebden Bridge, with no home of our own. Since then and because of success with funding bids and finding permanent premises, we have been able to deliver a service regularly each week and employ three paid youth work staff and three youth work trainees to work with our expanding number of young people. We regularly recruit volunteers to work alongside us, and often volunteers will progress to paid positions when we have vacancies and they have completed a minimum number of weeks/hours volunteering with us.

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Volunteering is at the heart of everything we do.  Through participation, we aim to encourage people to bring their talents and experience to the cause of helping others. We recognise that people want to use their skills, expertise and passion to give back to their community. Evidence tells us that if people are involved and engaged, they are less likely to feel isolated or lonely. Many of our volunteers work with us at more than one event. We support volunteers to undertake training relevant to their role. 

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All volunteers will be given a workplace induction and will undertake an enhanced DBS check. As part of their induction volunteers will undertake a mixed model of designated on-line and face to face youth work introductory training. Volunteers will be supervised by an experienced youth worker.

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CLOUD Career Path and Training Scheme.

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In keeping with the values of our parent organisation Reach4ward - to promote inclusion, reduce exclusion and reduce poverty -CLOUD aims to recruit locally wherever possible and support staff to become qualified in youth work whenever there is an opportunity to do so, and we have sufficient resources to enable this to happen. We have developed a training scheme that will enable volunteers with no experience to join our team, learn essential skills and knowledge, and then progress to more formal learning and paid work as Youth Work trainees. This will also enable those staff to undertake a formal qualification in Youth Work with a bursary from the National Youth Association and supported by CLOUD to complete an NVQ level 3 in Youth Work. 

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For those volunteers who do not wish to progress to become a trainee or to undertake a formal qualification, we have a Youth Work Assistant role which will support our qualified staff in their work each week. The minimum period of volunteering to access the opportunities outlined above is 6 weeks or 36 hours, and dependent on vacancies being/becoming available. 

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CLOUD will pay all volunteer expenses and will also pay not less than the National Living Wage for the Youth Work Assistant or Trainee roles. 

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Roles currently available:​

• youth work volunteer 6 hours per week 

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If you are interested in volunteering for any of our events or for our work with young people please contact CloudYouthClubHB@outlook.com

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