After an enjoyable weekend of volunteering in November at Amelia Trust Farm, UNA Exchange young ambassador, Georgia Quinn, spent a week in the office helping our Supported Volunteering programme lead, Rhi Davies. In our latest blog post, Georgia shares her experience.

Georgia explains: "On Friday the 23 of November I went to college as a normal day having packed the night before for my weekend ahead. I was as excited for this weekend ahead as I always am. No I’m not talking about a night out in the town and I’m not talking about a weekend out of Wales, I’m talking about a weekend in Barry, staying on a farm with two amazing leaders from UNA Exchange along with 12 other volunteers, 8 of which I have never met before. This is the fun exciting part: where as some people would find meeting new people nerve racking when in reality it’s the fun in things like this, you get to meet different types of people from different places with different backgrounds. I travelled from Pembroke Dock by car for 2 hours with 2 other volunteers that were attending the residential weekend. After meeting everyone we all took part in activities that was helpful because we got to learn everyone’s names and hear a little about each other. We had to do the boring part which was setting the ground rules but you can’t really go wrong with a bit of ground rules to have a smooth flowing weekend with no hassle, just fun. We discussed our hopes and fears for the weekend then we had some free time where I showed everyone my card trick which obviously amazed everyone so much they wanted me to teach them how to do it so I taught a few people and left some trying to figure it all out for themselves.

"you get to meet different types of people from different places with different backgrounds"

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"On Saturday everyone woke up bright and early ready for a day on the farm helping out with all sorts of stuff. We had our breakfast then did some teamwork and confidence building which I don’t want to talk about because my team lost the tower building competition, not to mention we won a more active game which involved a huge amount of concentration and patience but I’m not bragging, anyway, after that we headed off to do our volunteering activity and I’m not going to lie I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning out donkey waste without wellington boots, but to my amazement it was possibly one of the most enjoyable activities from the whole weekend plus the farm provided us with the boots so I didn’t get my shoes full of muck. We had to round up the donkeys and clean their waste from their shelter renew their food and beds and then let them back into their pen. We also fed the geese and ducks, we had to actually go into the field with them. Between all this we did have a break of course with food and drinks to restore our energy then we went back out and swapped activities. So this time around the team I was in had to make a path leading into the chicken field using breeze blocks and stones. This activity was a lot harder than the donkey muck one and it was a challenge as we had to work out the best way to build it. Luckily enough we had a great team and we all pulled together to create a great useful path that stopped the farmers getting dirty when they went in."

"Sunday the last day which is always a sad one because you're leaving all the people you just met, it feels like that weekend flies by. But this Sunday wasn’t like any other ordinary Sunday, we had a special visitor Jamie Baulch the British athlete who came to give us an inspirational talk. It was great to hear Jamie’s story and how he got to where he is today. One of the last things we did for the weekend was the evaluation and overview of how the weekend went. I presented images and spoke about my experience volunteering in Belgium for 2 weeks and allowed anyone to ask questions about my work camp, after me Hywel a volunteer that went to Estonia spoke about his experience and showed us his images. Then we all cleared out our rooms and set off home."

"I am now sat in the UNA office writing this during a week of work placement for college where I am studying health and social care in Pembrokeshire College. I am hoping to progress onto study psychology in university."

Great work Georgia and thanks to all our volunteers for your hard work at Amelia Trust Farm!

The UNA Exchange Supported Volunteering programme is enabled by Welsh Government through a Volunteering Wales Grant.

Supported volunteering at Amelia Trust Farm