As we wrap up the year and head into the Christmas party, the Young Commissioners are rightfully proud of what has been achieved this year. The latter half has brought a particularly creative focus, helping to bring a sense of kindness and collaboration to our community.

We are DELIGHTED to announce that the Community Volunteer Squad has been awarded funding from the National Lottery! This grant is a testament to the incredible dedication of our volunteers and the positive impact they create in the local community.

Our Benefits Form Filling Volunteers, trained by Citizens Advice Sutton, have supported over 300 residents and helped secure successful claims worth over £400,000 to date!

Our Befriending Volunteer, Gordon Thomas, supports Sutton Befrienders through his involvement in his local Rotary club and with the proceeds of his new book.

By purchasing tickets through our unique link for the match on Saturday 21st December, you will help to raise vital funds towards our charity work.

The Hong Kong Group Volunteering Project, run by Volunteer Centre Sutton from September to November 2024, has been a huge success with 112 participants registered.

For Trustees’ Week this November, we asked Vaskor, one of our Volunteer Centre Sutton trustees, to share his story.

A group of teenagers from our local Hong Konger community joined our Ukrainian Teenagers Saturday Club for fun, games, snacks and bonding over their experiences of moving to Sutton.

Help us light up Christmas for an isolated and lonely person in Sutton. Donate now to The Thoughtfulness Fund.

To help improve community safety by challenging intolerance and encouraging inclusion, Volunteer Centre Sutton and the Young Commissioners have developed a fun pocket guide and a vinyl window sticker for you to use.

Community Action Sutton and Volunteer Centre Sutton have commissioned a research project to develop understanding of the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector (VCSE) in the Borough of Sutton.

St Raphael’s Hospice kindly hosted our September Volunteer Manager gathering and shared their insights into what is involved in gaining the highly regarded Investing in Volunteers Award.

Volunteer Centre Sutton is delighted to be able to offer a programme of volunteering opportunities to the Hong Kong Community in the London Borough of Sutton. This project is funded by the Greater London Authority via Sutton Council.

Register now for the 2024 Sutton Youth Summit, a drop in space to connect with other young people and celebrate Sutton’s diversity together to reduce violent crime, as part of World Inclusion Day and World Mental Health Day all in Black History month. 

A huge thank you to Sutton Council for hosting a live stream webinar this week encouraging staff to consider volunteering with MAPS Mentoring.

One of our longest-standing teachers from the Ukrainian Saturday morning ‘school’ at Christ Church, shares her experiences.

Our Bonus August picnic ‘n’ play was a great opportunity for our Volunteer Advisors to get to know organisations looking for volunteers even better, to help our volunteer matching service improve.

Celebrating that our form filling project has now been running for one year. In this time we have supported over 200 residents to navigate the complexities of benefit forms!

Group members and befriending pairs enjoy a lovely afternoon at YourspaceSutton

26% of residents who have undergone a free health and wellbeing check have been revealed to have high blood pressure. Anyone showing a high reading is immediately referred for medical attention through a robust follow-up process.

Marking one year of our Volunteer Story of the Month feature, we talk to Peter Struik “serial volunteer” extraordinaire, Chair of Sutton Soup, and active volunteer with EcoLocal, amongst many others!

From isolation to confidence: how mentoring transformed Aria's life and school attendance.

"The families had a blast, and the kids were over the moon with excitement."

Following the Volunteer Coordinators’ Forum evening networking event in January, we decided to support every Sutton Soup this year and get to know each other and more local organisations in a more relaxed setting.

As Volunteer Centre Sutton is one of the Mayor of Sutton’s two chosen charities for 2023-2024, the Young Commissioners co-created an Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Saturday as a fun fundraising activity.

This month we hear from one of our longest serving MAPS mentors, Anthony French, about his experience over several years mentoring several young people in the borough.

A welcome-to-the UK course from Volunteer Centre Sutton helped Cynthia into volunteering as a Health Navigator.

Two of our Young Commissioners were invited to be part of a panel and to discuss how the Council budget is supporting young people's priorities of the cost of living, safety, inequalities and mental health.

This month we hear from two women about the effect befriending has had on their lives, in the lead up to International Women’s Day this month.

On Saturday 24th February 2024, the Ukrainian community in Sutton came together to mark the two years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After being excluded from school, mentoring became a sanctuary for Blake, especially sharing sports activities with his Mentor

Over 2000 people welcomed in the Year of the Dragon thanks to the Lunar New Year event held in Sutton library this weekend.

Ahead of #ChildrensMentalHealthWeek (5-11 February) we hosted a journaling session with our MAPS Mentoring pairs

Instead of a daytime Volunteer Coordinators' Forum in January, we had a drop in evening social at Shinner and Sudtone followed by the main event of Sutton Soup. It enabled those of you who volunteer around a full time job to join us too.

Joyful January is back for 2024 - daily doses of inspiration on our Facebook and Instagram pages to uplift your spirits. See how volunteering in our community helps both individuals and communities feel joyful and maybe a tempted to have a go yourself and get your friends along! Here's the roundup for Week 4.

Joyful January is back for 2024 - daily doses of inspiration on our Facebook and Instagram pages to uplift your spirits. See how volunteering in our community helps both individuals and communities feel joyful and maybe a tempted to have a go yourself and get your friends along! Here's the roundup for Week 3.

Joyful January is back for 2024 - daily doses of inspiration on our Facebook and Instagram pages to uplift your spirits. See how volunteering in our community helps both individuals and communities feel joyful and maybe a tempted to have a go yourself and get your friends along! Here's the roundup for Week 1.

Held within the beautiful Mallison room at Wallington Library, we learned all about DofE and how organisations can support DofE students with their voluntary section.

The Sutton Youth Summit, held on Thursday 16th November 2023, was a resounding success, drawing over 80 young people and 20 adults from the community.

Our Young Commissioners were given the opportunity to speak to Paul Scully, MP for Sutton and Cheam, Parliamentary Minister for London and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy).

Happy Halloween! Our October Volunteer Coordinators' Forum took place on 31st October so an element of seasonal fun was added.

Sutton Vision shares their story, just ahead of Befriending Week, of Adrian who volunteers as a telephone befriender for them.

Volunteering as a Sutton Befriender helped Elisabete recuperate from her own mental health problems, as well as helping Pat to regain her confidence.

MAPS Practitioner Teresa Martucci shares her thoughts on what Care Leavers need, for National Care Leavers' Week.

Get ready for the Sutton Youth Summit 2023: cost of living, safety, inequalities, mental health.

Focus on the MAPS Mentoring Esteem Pathway - supporting young people facing poor mental health, low self-confidence or self-esteem, self-harm and risk of suicide.

Our ladies did it! They did swimmingly and raised money for Volunteer Centre Sutton!

Our MAPS Mentoring project has been supporting Ukrainian young people in the London Borough of Sutton, thanks to funding from Sutton Council.

Calling all organisations, we want to hear your thoughts. We're now three quarters through the year and are starting to plan our free organisational support for 2024 and need your input.

Find out more about the exciting array of events happening, raising vital funds for Volunteer Centre Sutton and St Raphael’s Hospice

Every month we are sharing inspirational volunteer stories, with September being the start of a new term and school year we thought it would be good to hear from one of the younger voices of the volunteering world.

We are delighted to have been chosen as one of the Mayor of Sutton's two chosen charities for 2023-2024

A mentoring pair enjoying a meal, a game and a smile at the end of their year long mentoring relationship:

Sutton Befrienders walking tennis group's seven week trial in June and July has proved so successful it will return in September!

Shining the light on a new volunteer story this month to give further insight into those individuals who transform our borough.

Volunteer Health Navigators providing health checks to the local Ukraine Community at the 'Homes for Ukraine' event at The Salvation Army

Our annual event to celebrate the impact of Volunteer Centre Sutton and celebrate all that has been achieved over the past year took place on the afternoon of Thursday 6th July.

A round up of the last 6 months of Volunteer Coordinators Forums with Volunteer Centre Sutton. A fun way we support organisations that have volunteers to recruit, reward and retain volunteers is through getting volunteer coordinators together most months to share their top tips and learn from one another.

We were delighted to welcome Ellie Simmonds to Sutton to meet some of our activity buddies, filmed for BBC Morning Live in the run up to Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day.

The Young Commissioners have created a social media campaign to raise awareness of the issues.

Our wonderful colleagues, Hayley and Jenny, have been training hard since November to take part in this half marathon on 26th March.

At our most recent MAPS social, we set out to create a collaborative piece of art, in recognition of 2023's #ChildrensMentalHealthWeek theme “Let’s Connect”.

Navani, one of the Young Commissioners, will be writing regular blogs on what they get up to in their fornightly meetings

Our Ukraine Coordinator, Nataliya Semchyshyn, tells us about how the Ukrainian Community in Sutton has celebrated Christmas this year.

White Ribbon Day was on 25th November this year and marked the beginning of 16 Days of Action against gender-based violence.

Information about Warm Spaces in the borough of Sutton

We were delighted to welcome staff from British Airways to learn more about our Activity Buddy programme, funded by Comic Relief.

Our Young Commissioners met ahead of London Voter Registration Week 2022 to brainstorm messages that they want to share with young people

Join our team of Warm Spaces Volunteers

Volunteer Centre Sutton is one of over 40 national and regional projects being allocated further government funding from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to help British National (Overseas) families settle successfully into life in the UK.

Newly arrived Hong Kongers and local people united over afternoon tea in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee in Sutton’s Manor Park

Bernard moved to Sutton from Hong Kong in August 2021

Our MAPS mentoring project supports many young carers with one to one mentoring.

Volunteer Centre Sutton is one of 47 national and regional projects being allocated government funding from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to help British National (Overseas) families settle successfully into life in the UK.

A huge thank you to all the people in Sutton who generously bought gifts for the vulnerable children and aduts we support

We spoke to Neil Davies, who joined Volunteer Centre Sutton's board in 2021, on why he decided to become a Trustee.

"During my mentoring year I have learnt It can be good to meet new people" Jaz, aged 12

UPDATE: Thank you to EVERYONE who has donated to this appeal. We are now full and are no longer accepting any more physical donations.

As the Nonsuch Vaccination site winds down, we reflect on the past four and bit months, and an incredible team of 190 volunteers who have made it all possible

Rosina and Alex, one of our Sutton Befrienders pairs

Trevor and David, one of our Sutton Befrienders pairs

Since the start of the pandemic, a staggering 12.4 million adults in the UK have volunteered – with more than a third stepping forward for the first time. Read Katie's story about how lockdown gave her the impetus to volunteer with us

This is a live Zoom recording of an event which took place on Wednesday 14th October 2020 at 4pm. This event was joined by staff, volunteers and supporters from voluntary and community organisations across Sutton, to thank all volunteers in Sutton for their amazing and ongoing contribution.

Volunteers living in Sutton helped deliver more than 5000 food packages to Suttons' vulnerable and severely ill. Marta Rocco, Volunteer Centre Sutton's Volunteer Delivery and Development Manager, explains their role in coordinating volunteers to provide essential support to the shielded community

From managing 150 volunteers to managing 733 volunteers during Covid-19: #SmallCharityBigImpactDay 19th June 2020

Today we are launching a Covid-19 appeal to support the ongoing work of Sutton's Voluntary and Community Sector in response to the impact of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak.

Between the 1st and 24th December, we're bringing you a new volunteering opportunity from organisations in Sutton and beyond

Congratulations to one of our longest standing MAPS Mentors, Derek Terrell, who was awarded Outstanding Volunteer at the 2019 Sutton Community Awards

Find out who was shortlisted for this year's Sutton Community Awards

Do you know an individual or group that deserves special recognition? Nominate now for Sutton's Community Awards

One of our long-standing MAPS mentors shares her experiences

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton. Sutton Carers Centre would like to thank Jean Sharpington.

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton. The Dreaming Tree Project would like to thank Bambina.

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton. Sutton Community Works would like to thank Vicki.

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton. Home-Start Sutton would like to thank Diana Broad.

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton and beyond. Jigsaw4u would like to thank Jacqui O'Connor

Throughout Volunteers' Week we're sharing 'thank you' messages to volunteers from organisations in Sutton. Our MAPS team would like to thank Caroline Magin

"I have volunteered forever" read Mary's inspiring story

There are currently around 850,000 people in the UK with dementia. Dementia Friends is a programme led by the Alzheimer's Society to change people's perceptions of dementia and to create dementia-friendly communities.

Spending time in green space or bringing nature into your everyday life can benefit both your mental and physical wellbeing. And doing these things as a volunteer will benefit you even more!

Our Young Commissioners help shape Healthwatch Sutton's recent survey into young people and mental health

With this funding, our two organisations will work together to deliver a programme across Sutton's voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. We will build and develop the capacity, skills, knowledge and experience of the sector, helping to transform Sutton's communities.

Tuesday 27th November is #GivingTuesday and to celebrate we want to share with you some very festive volunteering opportunities in Sutton this Christmas as well as ways you can support local giving initiatives.

Afraid of leaving the house and struggled to cope with the demands of school life, he turned to MAPS for support

She needed help to process her abusive childhood experiences

Guest blogger Sorrel Parsons of Superhighways shares her top 5 free and easy-to-use apps to help small charities better demonstrate their impact. Part of our new Digital resources blog series!

A brief summary of some of the findings from our recent research pilot looking into the effects of volunteering on health and wellbeing

Pat, our Volunteering Development Manager, relates the story of Patrick, one of the participants in our prescribed volunteering project, who said that volunteering is the connection between his old world and his new world.

We asked Judith Smith, Pastor of Horizon Church Sutton to write a guest blog about the positive experiences her church has had hosting Employer-Supported Volunteer teams at her church building, from which several community projects are run. She shares about the impact of ESV, some of the challenges and her top tips for any organisation thinking of hosting an ESV team.

Matt (Digital Inclusion Coordinator) interviews Helen Gasparelli (Mentoring & Advocacy Manager) about her recent Employee Volunteering (EV) experience.

Priya volunteers at the Refugee and Migrant Network in Sutton, where she teaches English as a Second language to adults