Why are we asking you to share awareness about Coram Beanstalk?

You’re paying us to deliver a service and we ask you to do some of the work for us - what’s that all about?!

Yes, we hear you! It may seem a bit odd, but we know from experience that if we don’t get schools involved in sharing our awareness-raising messages, we won’t find the right people to support your children.

We ask you to help us for three main reasons:

• Local people know local places – we can sit and research the internet for where to send posters, but nothing beats your local knowledge of where the right footfall is, or someone asking in-person if the poster can be displayed. 
• Many hands make light work – if you can engage all of your colleagues in sharing messages the message will be heard or seen by more people. Conversations often lead to links with other organisations or friends and family who could help share the volunteering opportunity. 
• It keeps our costs low – if we were to employ local teams to focus on raising awareness in all our locations, our costs would need to increase to cover this.

What does Beanstalk do?

Once we receive completed applications from potential volunteers, we take over completely; we answer queries, follow safer recruitment processes and ensure key skills are demonstrated through our training journey. If anyone applies who isn’t suitable, it’s our job to gently let them down. Anyone who becomes a reading helper with us can access ongoing support from our team, an online resource portal, further learning and development sessions and more. You can find out more about how we train and support our reading helpers here. 

Those who do volunteer with us, really enjoy their role. It’s a fantastic opportunity to offer people. 

I have found it hugely rewarding. I think it probably does as much good for the volunteers as for the children. It's an opportunity to participate in schooling in an informal way, yet within the formal framework of training and guidance provided by Coram Beanstalk.

Rosemary Ewles

In addition to your help, we will:

• Post on local and national volunteer opportunity databases.

• Seek coverage in local and national media.

• Promote the vacancies on local and national social media groups.

How can you help us?

To make this easy for you we can provide these downloadable and shareable resources: 

An overview PowerPoint to share with your staff about the Coram Beanstalk service.

Printable posters to display on local noticeboards.

Social media wording and a graphic tile to share across your social media channels.

Wording for your school newsletter.

Wording for community groups newsletters.

Here's an example of a school promoting our volunteering opportunity on their own Facebook page: