Transcript

PATRINA:

My name is Patrina Law, and I volunteer for Waddesdon Hall, which is a registered charity for a Grade II listed building in Buckinghamshire. I started volunteering about eight years ago for the Hall because I was using the hall as a dance teacher, and I was told by the committee that the hall was considering its exit strategy.

And it’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s the only hall for the community in that area. And it’s beautiful, it’s one of the last dance halls left in the county, and in fact, there’s not many dance halls left in the UK, they often get carpeted and things.

So I was just really shocked that it was going to be disbanded, and it’s a charity, and it’s a beautiful building.

So I got myself on to the committee and got other people involved in the committee and other people involved as volunteers. And over a period of years, have raised enough money to do a large number – sorry, a small number of large building projects to completely turn the hall around, change its renting strategy, and get it back into profit again and functioning as a true and beautiful village hall that’s used for the whole community.

So for me, I fell into volunteering, I didn’t consider that I’d stood up one day and decided to do some volunteering. I felt that there was a cause there and I needed to get involved, and I did. And it became a very satisfying endeavour.

I was surprised at how many of my work skills I could use in this voluntary way, especially when it came to raising funds, because filling-in grant application forms is a very onerous process. And you’ve got to stay very patient and you’ve got to be thick skinned enough to take the knock backs when you don’t get the grant that you were hoping for.

When you do get the grant you were hoping for and you see the project be fulfilled, it is immensely satisfying. and then the knock-on effects of that are that the hall thrives. And once you’ve had one grant, you have more confidence about you to apply for others. And also I think volunteering is satisfying because you can infect other people with the bug of how satisfying it is.

You can get more people involved. And in doing so, it makes your life easier as a volunteer, because you’ll become surrounded by like-minded individuals. And I think for the case of Waddesdon Hall, it was simply that, whilst it was a beautiful building that was falling into disrepair, no one in the community knew it was even a registered charity. No one knew it was going to be shut down. And I think communicating to people around in the environment that you’re going to lose this amazing asset if we don’t all get together was a real incentive.

So now I feel satisfied, I can take a step back and I can listen to other people on the committee who are far wiser than me and have far more experience than me, and take a leaf out of their book, and I’m learning from them now that it’s standing on its own two feet.