Why volunteer

Volunteering with Focus Birmingham is much more than just giving time – it’s a way of making your own life better

Dedicating your time as a volunteer will have an enormous impact on your self esteem and confidence. Through our wide variety of roles we can help you gain skills, expand your personal networks, make lots of new friends and of course make a real difference to the people we support. 

Whether you can give a couple of hours a week or several days a month, your time will make all the difference.

We have a wide variety of roles so you can have a meaningful impact on others, depending on your interests and skills.

Take a look at the difference our volunteers make: 

• Our telephone befriends make over 110 hours of calls a month to people in the community offering invaluable contact
• Our volunteers give over 23, 808 hours of their time each year to the people we support, to continue making lives better
• 2,080 hours of support a year is given to our optician, ophthalmologist and patients by our Low Vision admin volunteers

Volunteer Testimonies:

Volunteer A "I feel the main impact I have on service users is that they can see that having a VI is not a barrier to getting on in life".

Volunteer B "When supporting the social group I enjoy helping people in the group that find interaction difficult by sitting down and having a chat with them 1:1 and encouraging conversations with others, I even host some of the quizzes". 

Johnathan, Admin Volunteer "I have volunteered with Focus for nearly a year helping to produce learning materials for our service users. Contributing to the Focus team has provided me with a meaningful and fulfilling role which has given me a new purpose in life, and has greatly improved my mental health". 

Sacha, Telephone Befriender "One of the greatest gifts is giving my time to support and empower citizens with sight loss."

Stephen, Telephone Befriender "My role is to listen and talk with visually impaired people who are isolated in their homes. It's been a real pleasure to learn about their interesting lives and contribute to the good of the wider community". 

Sonia, Telephone Befriender "It's so rewarding knowing that  a weekly phone call to someone can help reduce their feeling of loneliness and isolation for a small part of their day." 

Make a difference today and help us to continue making lives better, see all our current volunteering opportunities here