Share your Skills & Volunteer
Volunteers come to us from many places, either as individual or as groups. We have several individuals whose regular presence in our lives makes an enormous difference, in many special ways, to the wellbeing of the farm, staff and students by helping out on the farm at weekends; using woodwork skills to make 'kits' for the students to assemble (e.g. for our reindeer); helping in a variety of roles on Open Days and sale events; offering specialist help from their own knowledge base for business planning and conservation; and by creating wonderful photographic records, and much more.
We are also very grateful for regular help from organisations to carry out jobs that may be too much for us to achieve by ourselves such as painting, decorating and major garden tidy-ups before our events. We receive regular support from Nationwide, the Coop and Serco.
We also much appreciate one off volunteer visits such as from Vodafone, Zurich, Quilter and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Agricultural Mortgage Company to paint the interiors of our buildings, plant hedges and erect fencing.
We are now welcoming a new group of volunteers who ask us for training and reciprocate by sharing their own skills with us. We have had visitors from Greece and Slovenia who have come to volunteer their time and skills whilst learning about our approach to autism summed in our training course (TIARA): The InterAction between the Rural environment and Autism.
A wide range of skills is needed to support the ongoing work of the Trust:
- Gardening
- Woodwork
- Animal Care (out of hours)
- Conservation (e.g. hedge planting and continuing care of hedges)
- Tidying for and helping out on Open Days
- Painting and Decorating
- Admin (e.g. publicity support)
If you are interested in volunteering, then please email us at info@pennyhooks.com to receive an Expression of Interest Form.
Help to Fundraise
We would like to extend our grateful thanks to all those who raise money in support of our work. Pennyhooks could not function without the kindness of others.
There are a number of different ways you can help to fundraise:
- Attending a Pennyhooks event such as our Open Days, Plant Sales, Christmas Fayres or special concerts. Even every piece of the homemade cakes we sell raises money for us. See our Facebook page for dates of our upcoming events.
- Buying our handmade products from our shop.
- Organising your own event or gain sponsors to help us. People in the past have organised a concert locally and a debate at University; ridden their bikes (to Lands End and even to Rome!); run the Ridgeway and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro; took part in a sponsored swim and held a raffle to gain sponsorship for Pennyhooks; the Cubs did a sponsored walk; People kindly hold coffee mornings and much more.
- Signing up to Easy Fundraising and raise money for us as you shop online. Go to https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk and search for Pennyhooks Farm Trust as your chosen organisation.
- Buying our handmade products from our online shop.
- Ordering our eggs from us or buy them from Blacklands Organics in Shrivenham.
- Taking part in our Smartie Tube Appeal - come to one of our events and pick up a free Smartie tube; once you have finished eating the Smarties, fill the tube with coins which can bring us a very welcome £10 in return per tube.
