Vision Foundation wouldn’t be able to achieve everything it does without the wonderful and generous volunteers who give their time to support the visually impaired community. From helping out in our shops and donation centres, to cheering along marathon runners, or dedicating time as a trustee, every hour volunteered makes a huge difference.
This Volunteers Week we are celebrating our volunteers and saying a big thank you.
Brinda joined us as a volunteer in 2020, helping list items on eBay. She’s now working full-time as our Head of e-Commerce. Here she talks about her motivation for volunteering and her team of enthusiastic volunteers…
Brinda’s journey
My journey into the charity was as a volunteer myself. I wanted to give my time and knowledge of fashion and vintage items knowing the work I was doing was making a valuable contribution to the charity, as well as gaining extra skills myself.
I have three volunteers who help me in eBay, two are very book focused and one loves technology and games.
Megan is super bright and devours books. She finds out quirky facts about the old and unusual books we have!
Fiona has also come to me be as a book expert and is extremely methodical and conscientious. They both have a vast book knowledge which helps me tremendously as a lot of the books we have are old and unusual, these types of books need extra time to find out their history and worth. It pays dividends as we subsequently sell a lot of books.
Avi is my newest volunteer – he has loads of energy and enthusiasm. He’s a quick learner and went from listing in his first day of training to selling that same item the following day! He knows a lot about gaming and techy stuff, which is invaluable to me as I’m weak in that area.
Having volunteers in eBay who have a wide range of knowledge means we can list items across the board. It means our shop is varied catering to as many different customers and all tastes.
As I am the only full-time member on eBay, my time is taken up with, not just listing, but curating, customer service, packing sold items, and the whole day to day running of the department.
I fully appreciate the work my volunteers do as they give up their valuable free time to be here, they add energy and vibrancy to the department as well as providing extra skills. Every task and every listing they post makes a real difference and I personally value and appreciate them all.
