Hello.

My name is Jeff Richards. I am delighted to be a volunteer.

I work full-time from home for a major UK Software company. My work is global, I work remotely with teams from Australia to West Coast Canada and it is remote working and need to spread my working day across 24
hours which gives me time to take part in community activities.

I am also a Church of England lay minister at St Nicholas. That's Sutton's ancient parish church. Currently, I preparing a group of young people for Confirmation.

My voluntary work with the church included visiting a care home every week, delivering pastoral care and working with young people's organisations.

I am the chair of the 1st/16th Sutton Scout Group - a wonderful team of volunteers - and I am very pleased to have worked with our treasurer to establish a bursary scheme so that none of our young members are ever excluded from Scouting activities on the grounds of cost.

My Christian faith is a huge motivator in what I do - I suppose I am trying to do my utmost for his highest - it is a type of response in gratitude to what I feel I have been given.

Much of what I achieve is because I work with other volunteers. In my experience Teamwork is essential. I am the presenter and public face of Sutton Soup, a community fundraising event, that takes place 4 times a
year - we raise thousands of pounds for great local causes. Sutton Soup couldn't exist without the team who do everything from cooking the soup, baking the bread, transporting and setting up equipment and doing the
washing up. I am a cog in a very rewarding and fun machine.

I lead SUTTONfx a small charity that starts and runs projects like the Tuesday Chatty Cafe - that's a place to meet new friends, play games and talk! It's all about building social cohesion and reducing isolation. Who doesn't love a chat over a cup of tea?

Another project I work on is the Care Leavers Kits - that is a box containing useful stuff for young adults leaving the care system within the London Borough of Sutton- that project's my baby but the Mothers' Union
really do that work - and I certainly don't hand write the letters or knit the little teddies that go in the kits.

I also work with young adults with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, especially in the creation of the Dr George Rice Community Garden - these are students at local schools and colleges. You may well
find me down at the Garden in Gibson Road, digging or chopping but you may well find me writing proposals and grant applications, or out and about showing people the projects trying to get them as excited as I am
about the possibilities that exist in our community.

I am interested in local history, and am the secretary of Friends of St Nicholas Churchyard - so I have helped organise heritage exhibitions and I am working with the council of the development (and execution) of a
churchyard management plan. One small part of that work is that I get to work with talented people like Team Imagineers who are just finishing Sutton's biggest mural in the alleyway that leads from St Nicholas
Churchyard to Robin Hood Lane.

I am the secretary of the Sutton New Town Community Festival - so you may well have seen me dressed as Father Christmas or as a Town Crier in Sutton High Street or the park - it is enormous fun staging things like
the Manor Park Village Fete or Community Carolling. Much of the work that I do has a social justice focus, looking at how we can involve people of all ages, all abilities in building a kinder better Sutton, no matter what your faith or ethnicity.

And volunteering is all about the "us" and the "we", little touches of kindness can change people's lives, yours and mine included.

Get in touch with the team at the Volunteer Centre and learn how you can be part of changing lives, doing good and experience the happiness that comes from volunteering.