Farmborough Community Shop

Supporting our village and local community

Volunteers needed!

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Farmborough Community Shop is planning to open in June 2018.

Once open, it will offer an essential service to many people, providing not only groceries but a place to meet and socialise and will quickly become an integral part of our village community. Our volunteers will be essential to the success of the shop.

We will be operating a rota system of up to five shifts per day. We estimate that most of our volunteers will work one shift a week, although some may choose to do two or even three.  Some may prefer to work once a fortnight or even once a month. We will do our best to be flexible and will try to accommodate everyone’s wishes, but we will need around 50-60 people on our volunteer list to make this possible.

How can you help?

Working behind the till is just one way of helping the shop.  Other ways of helping include:

  • Receiving deliveries from our main suppliers and re-stocking the shelves.
  • Serving coffee, tea and cakes in the coffee shop or just help with the till and clearing up.
  • Baking cakes for our coffee shop.
  • Maintenance work, for example, carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and odd jobs.
  • Volunteer support, offering help, guidance and peer support to new and existing volunteers.
  • Researching new products we might stock.
  • Occasional shopping trips to replenish stocks.
  • Behind the scenes and professional help, e.g. banking, accounting and bookkeeping, legal and policy documentation, or human resources.
  • Helping with computer skills.

Whatever skill or interest our volunteers have, we will welcome and appreciate all offers of help. 

Volunteers need to be over the age of 15 but there is no upper age limit. Volunteers can be of all ages and include students working towards their Duke of Edinburgh Award, people in full-time employment who can only help out at weekends, as well as the ‘active retired’. If you would like to join the team please complete our volunteer application form.

For further information, please visit our volunteer page or contact us if you have any questions.

 

Can you help the committee?

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shop_wordleThe community shop is still in progress, but moving slowly along. 2015 has been a trying year both personally and professionally for the committee, but we are still committed to making the shop a reality. The speed at which it will arrive depends on two main points:

1) Investment by villagers – from as little as £10 per person (over 18) to show community support and to help with matched funding.

2) Support by villagers – joining or helping the committee to get things done and speed things along

The current Shop Management Committee has only four members, with all but one working full-time. A couple more people helping us would be wonderful, and would accelerate what we can achieve, by the virtue of many hands making light work.

If you can spare some time to help us, particularly in the area of fundraising (e.g. arranging events, and applying for funding), the sooner we can all approach the exciting point of turning drawings and dreams, into bricks and mortar.

Personally and as a committee, we regret the delay to the shop project in 2015, but it has been vital to get all issues resolved with the Memorial Hall Committee so that we can work together and concentrate on making Farmborough an even better place to live, with the addition of a Community Shop.

We wish you a very Happy New Year!