General volunteer updates

May 2024 Update – volunteers

We promised to give you an update after the meeting to celebrate our first year.

Who organises us all?

The community shop is overseen by a Steering Committee.  In their turn those people, depending on the role they hold, may need to co-opt people to support them and with sub teams.  Those on the steering committe with specific roles are

• Lance Moir – The Lead for this project provides all the financial skills
• Jerry Pattison – purchasing and stock organisation, overseas all stock purhasing and products, and how they are stored.
• Julian Spicer – procedural documentation & much more
• Sheila Gibbs – Overall lead on shop floor.  Pilots the shop floor volunteers, the rotas & much more.  Supported by Helen Harding for communicatons.
• Russ Sandy – Postmaster / perishable goods purchasing & much more.  Russ is the go to person in the shop in the mornings when any of the volunteers has a question or a problem.
• Lucy Bateman – handles and oversees the day to day accounting for the shop, administers the website and represents the window team on the committee
• Paula Clements – overall lead on marketing, publicity, press, advertising, leaflet, signage, poster design & promotions and ideas.  Sub teams support Paula on Social Media and website admin.

Who else ?

Other volunteers offered or were co-opted to undertake specific roles.  Most of these are ‘back of house’ and unseen but vital to the continued success of the shop.

• John Wisdom leads the maintenance team.  John knows the whole building quite well and had been supporting Roger for some years with maintenance tasks.
• Mary Scott handles the monthly & weekly customer accounts
• Lucy, Mary and Lance are all trained to operate and run the Post Office counter in Russ’s absence – with occasional support from Sharon (seen in the photo with Lucy not long before the community shop was set up).
• Helen Harding handles the volunteer email output and lists
• John Leech who owns and runs the Stogumber Village website is setting up the database for the new products and stock system.  This is to be the basis and part and parcel of the new till system.  This system will support
  •  Jerry in his purchasing and stock control role
  • Sheila and Russ in their organisational front of house stock control roles.
• Colin White pulls together some of the deep cleaning teams.
• Marketing & publicity work is probably more work and more time consuming than most realise: Most of these sub team leaders hold down full time jobs.   Owing to continuous input necessary to this role and the various elements involved, as the shop becomes more established and progresses it requires a larger team than just the original 1 person with 2 back up people.
  • James Tillyer leads social media pages and Facebook. James also supports Social Media & website photography.
  • Bettina Walker supports Social Media & website admin + plus photos as above
  • John Withrington is our Press Release lead.
  • Instagram – we are looking for a volunteer to handle this so please get in touch with Paula Clements if interested.
  • Lucy Bateman now handles the website admin with James Tillyer and Bettina Walker as back up.
  • Window dressing team of 6 overseen by Rebecca Pearman until her family grew ! The team manage themselves.  The brief is to cleverly incorporate shop products into the themed window displays thus promoting products whilst allowing views of the interior of the shop to visitors from outside.

New Faces:

Several new faces will be seen amongst the ‘front of house’ volunteers in the shop as well as some new ones on the ‘back of house’ roles.   Some are new residents whilst others have lived in the village for a number of years.  We welcome them all and hope they will enjoy their role.  It may be challenging at times but we trust it will be enjoyable and that they will meet new friends along the way.

Volunteering for the shop has brought together a number of people who had not met previously or had met but hardly knew eath other.  Many have made good social contacts and friendships.  Other local businesses have benefited and we see groups of volunteers meeting in the White Horse Inn 2 doors away and at the Rocking Horse cafe near Stogumber Station too.

Our Volunteers and a working background:

Not everyone is aware that 50% of the committe members and those co-opted to support them in their various roles, work full time or very nearly full time. A good many of the shop front shift volunteers are similary employed elsewhere.  However they are all prepared to offer their time and skills for this community venture outside or alongside their work committments.

In hindsight:

We should all maybe step back and think about this for a moment – for 364 days of the year, Roger and Anne Howe used to handle all of the above tasks and roles mainly on their own.  They did have the support and help of Sharon in the Post Office and occasional assistance one day a week in the shop from residents such as Sandy H, Marilyn B and Chris Garwood.  then later from Jerry P and Paula N.  Once again we should applaud Roger and Anne’s organisational abilities and smooth running of the shop for this village until their retirement in 2023.