Family Friends calls for more volunteers

Family Friends is calling on residents to lend their support to enable the charity to continue to help people in need.

The charity was founded 25 years ago to support families in Windsor and Maidenhead experiencing difficult times.

Simon Foy, chairman of Family Friends, told the Advertiser the charity is ‘facing an uphill struggle to fund ourselves to allow us to deliver really important work to support families in need’.

He added: “We are very much part of the vital, but often not very high profile, service which is seeking to support families before they reach a point of crisis.”

Alongside volunteers, Family Friends is looking for more trustees with fundraising expertise, and for residents to ask employers if they could sponsor the charity.

“We have to rely more and more on donations from the public and businesses and have to constantly think up ways of trying to lift our profile and build awareness of our role as a local charity working within Royal Borough,” said Simon.

Cllr Helen Price (The Borough First, Clewer & Dedworth East), has been involved with the charity for about nine years, during which time she has worked as a trustee and volunteer.

She said: “I find the families so appreciative of what we doing to support them.

“They get someone who is non-judgemental, someone who is not an official who might refer them onwards, someone who is local, who really cares about them and determined to support them through their difficulty.”

The charity has a ‘long supportive history with the Royal Borough’ and is working with Eton College, which supported the organisation at the Eton Action Community Fair last September.

Family Friends is briefing a small group of Eton pupils, who are learning about consultancy and business skills, to contact businesses and discover how they decide which charities to support.

It is also designing a database to enable them to use contact information more efficiently.

“We hope that both of these projects and any publicity around them could raise our profile and of course allow us to get the funding we need to help families stay together,” Simon added.

Visit http://family-friends.org.uk/volunteering/ to get involved.