Garden Activity Volunteer at the Access Place

Access Place Garden Activity Volunteer

Time commitment: 10.30-3.30pm

Access Place: 6 S Gray's Cl, High St, Edinburgh EH1 1TQ

Overview

The Access Place is a one stop shop offering services including housing, health and social work to anyone experiencing homelessness. In partnership with Cyrenians, ELGT and others a community garden has been established in the derelict playground attached to the building providing a green haven for staff and service users. It has become the heart of a wider green nature health programme involving service users from the Access Place and provides a range of garden activities, and every Wednesday a free lunch!

What are the aims and expectations of the role?

The TAPGAV will work with the Garden Coordinator to design and deliver a range of garden based activities to engage service users in positive and meaningful activities.

Depending on season, and the interests and abilities of the service users who attend this can include:

• Gardening activities: sowing seeds, planting or harvesting crops, weeding raised beds, watering, propagating plants
• Garden maintenance: making or maintaining planters, painting garden furniture, maintaining grounds
• Nature based activities: making lavender bags or wands, pressing or drying flowers or plants, making bouquet garni or other products with garden produce, other craft activities using garden ingredients.

The aim of the role is to provide engaging activities for participants attending the garden, and to support them on their Nature Health Journey.

About Cyrenians

Cyrenians is over 50 years old. We began with the creation of an innovative community to meet the needs of a group of homeless people who had fallen through the cracks of whatever support was available at the time.  Our roots lie in responding to the injustice of homelessness. 

We have spent the last five decades journeying with people grappling with the causes and consequences of homelessness through building and nurturing of trusted relationships and engaging with social exclusion and inequality which has so often been at the root of their tough reality. We are values-led and relationship based; our core values are Compassion, Respect, Integrity and Innovation.

Cyrenians’ head office is based in Edinburgh, with smaller offices in other areas, including Falkirk and West Lothian. Cyrenians is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), registered charity SC011052.