Making guitars out of cereal boxes – simple joys of volunteering

With National Volunteers’ Week in full flow, racing contains plenty of stories of its workforce giving up time year-round to help others. Kayleigh Young-Valentine is Senior Events Co-ordinator at Chester Racecourse and was part of the team who all contributed to Chester’s Project 1000.

Kayleigh has worked at the Deeside track for seven years and for the past two has engaged with the company-led Project 1000: a scheme that enabled racecourse staff to donate a total of 1000 hours volunteering to their local community.

The charity Passion for Learning was the choice of Kayleigh as she was motivated by their work to provide support for under privileged primary school children struggling with reading/writing and confidence. As with many charities, volunteers are a welcome asset at Passion for Learning as they focus resources on giving children the opportunities to learn skills that may be out of reach, for a number of reasons.

Kayleigh spent the day at the local Storyhouse Theatre where a group of volunteers had set up various science-themed activity stations for an afternoon of fun learning activities for the young people. These stations included a smoothie-making bicycle and the task of making guitars out of elastic bands and cereal boxes. Kayleigh was joined by other volunteers from various Chester companies who were also volunteering on the day.

“It felt really good giving back to the community, and to see the response from the children made it really worth it for me. I especially felt that the Passion for Learning is a really worthy cause and if I had more time, I would be a regular volunteer at the charity. It was just so interesting seeing how local people live and the various factors that can affect them.”

If you are interested in volunteering, why not look at the Racing Together volunteer website, which is specifically designed for volunteer opportunities across the sport: https://horseracing.do-it.org/