Celebrating our Voices volunteers
At Melin we are committed to building strong, resilient communities and to engaging with our residents every step of the way. One of the ways we engage with our residents is through the volunteers on our Melin Voices group. June sees Britain celebrate National Volunteers’ Week, so we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to highlight the fantastic work our Voices have been doing to make a difference to our neighbourhoods over the last year.
Written by Will
—05 Jun, 2023
Melin Voices is a group made up of Melin residents who have volunteered to provide feedback and insight into how we run our services. The panel meets regularly to discuss issues related to housing, local communities and resident engagement. We encourage all of our residents from all of the areas we serve to become Melin Voices, to help ensure that the group represents the full spectrum of the association's residents.
The role of Melin Voices is crucial to our success. By providing feedback and insight, the panel helps us to tailor our services and better understand the needs of residents. This provides our staff with a greater understanding of what residents want and helps us to satisfy the needs of residents and build stronger communities.
Meet Helen from our Voices
The last year has been the first full year where we have been able to move beyond the pandemic and reassess the needs and wants of residents in the post-pandemic world. As such, the Voices have been very busy over the last year and have achieved a lot on behalf of our communities. They have helped to scrutinise the work we do, consult with us on changes we want to make and even sat in on interviews when we hire new Melin staff.
They have also been particularly active regarding identifying funding needs and they distributed:
• £20,950 to fund food and fuel vouchers to Melin residents in need
• £253 for a sensory garden for Blaenavon Heritage School
• £300 to support Torfaen Voluntary Alliance, sponsoring their awards night
• £500 to support the Only Melin Aloud choir
• £580 for garden furniture for our residents at the Ty George Lansbury sheltered scheme
• £98 towards Christmas selection boxes for Melin children on our Santa visits
• Hundreds of pounds in funding for our sheltered schemes to run Christmas and Easter social events
These achievements show just how important the work of our Melin Voices is and reflects how working in partnership with our communities we are able to make a real difference to residents.
We are so proud of our Melin Voices volunteers we wanted to take this opportunity on 2023 Volunteers' Week to recognise and thank them for their hard work. The Voices give their time and energy to help us better serve our residents and we appreciate their constructive, critical and considered feedback in our work. We are always on the look-out for new volunteers and we would love to hear from more residents who are interested in volunteering with the Voices.
We look forward to continuing our important work with our Voices and another busy year of community and resident engagement. We know that times are tough with the cost of living crisis, but we also know that by working in partnership with our residents we can get through it together.
