The Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust upskill their Hartlepool Action Lab volunteers through e-learning.

The Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust is a registered housing association and care provider in York and North-East England working to inspire social change. They also have a communities team, who help reduce poverty within York & Hartlepool.

The team in Hartlepool, support the Hartlepool Action Lab (HAL) which is a collection of individual volunteers, voluntary organisations, businesses and public sector agencies. They come together to better understand the challenges experienced by people in the town and develop working solutions to provide people with routes out of poverty.

Through lots of consultations with the people of Hartlepool HAL has 6 projects which focus on food, fuel, benefits, social action leadership, housing & community.

Community projects rely on volunteers

All these projects rely on fantastic volunteers to help run and support the projects. Volunteers complete a variety of roles including administration, advocacy, maintenance, cooking and everything in between.

JRHT pride themselves on ensuring their volunteers get as much out of the experience as possible, such as social interaction, making new friends and a sense of achievement. However, they wanted their volunteers to get even more from volunteering with them.


Boosting skills through e-learning

That’s where The Digital College came in. The Digital College have given all JRHT volunteers the opportunity to boost their skills further by completing any of the online courses they run.

The volunteers are now able to gain certificates which not only develop their volunteering skills but also enhance their CVs.

‘Digital College have been so generous in offering our volunteers the opportunity to complete their courses and develop their skills even further. We have received excellent feedback from all volunteers who have completed courses. They have found them educational and enjoyable, whilst being very simple to navigate. We can’t thank the Digital College enough for working with us and our volunteers’

Sarah Lattaway, volunteering & social action leader worker

JRHT volunteers have completed a wide variety of courses including food hygiene level 2, early years childcare for nurseries, COSHH and safeguarding.

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