A new and innovative emergency response and recovery volunteer team has launched in the London Boroughs of Camden and Hammersmith & Fulham, which will enable local people, businesses and organisations with relevant skills, experience and donations of items and space to be able to help in a time of an emergency.
The experience of the Grenfell tragedy and the Chalcots Estate evacuation showed that there was a surplus of people with useful skills and experience, e.g. Counselling, who offered to volunteer but were not allowed to help as they were not known by the local authority dealing with the situation. Therefore, people who live and work close to an emergency who want to offer useful assistance are not usually given an opportunity to help as they are not known to the local authority and there is no time during an emergency to vet their skills and check credentials.
To rectify this, the new CAMERA (Coordinating And Mobilising Emergency Response Activists) Emergency Response & Recovery Volunteer initiative, delivered by two charities Volunteer Centre Camden (VCC) and Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre (HFVC), will enable local people who have useful skills and experience to be known and trusted to the local authority and so can be called upon in the time of an emergency.
We are now asking for expressions of interest from local people who live or work in Camden and/or Hammersmith & Fulham who would be interested in volunteering in an emergency. We also want to know what skills and experience you have that could help people being affected by an emergency, as well as items or space that would be useful in the event of an emergency.
As you can see, we’ve already had a think about roles which would be useful in an emergency. These include:
- Rest Centre Officers (RCOs) – Major events such as the Grenfell tragedy and the Chalcots Estate evacuation involved a Rest Centre (RC) which was set up to house those who had been displaced. Each RC has a Rest Centre Manager (RCM) who is employed by the local Council ( there are eight RCMs who have a rota of those on standby and on call)
- The RCOs will do the following type functions:
- Register people (this is an ESSENTIAL task that has to be carried out)
- Provide refreshments
- Give information (including updates as they arrive)
- Signposting people
- Help people to get their medication
- Sitting with older people who need some company/support.
- The skills needed for this role include to be willing and confident talking to people and willingness to do some admin as well as good listening skills.
- The RCOs will do the following type functions:
- Donation Assistants – This role will involve sorting through donations, assessing what is needed and what is not (people donate all kinds of inappropriate stuff apparently), boxing things up and helping them to get to the Rest Centre
- Entertainers – to entertain people at the Rest Centres
- Social Media Assistants – to respond to queries and to give or retweet real time, useful and correct information
Useful skills for the volunteers include:
- Languages spoken
- First Aid or other skill in healthcare
- Counselling skills
- Youth worker skills
- Other skills that enables volunteers to help work with local people, e.g. mental health
Organisations and Businesses
In addition to giving time and skills we are also looking for offers of space and things that you would be able to offer in the event of an emergency. This could include things such as:
- Nappies
- Food / drink
- Board games
- Toiletries
- And more
We will soon announce dates for our info sessions which will let you know about us, the project and the volunteering itself.
We are now looking for registrations of interest, or ideas about additional volunteering roles, skills, premises or goods that would be useful in the event of an emergency. And you can do that quickly and easily via this short questionnaire on Survey Monkey will take about five minutes to complete.
If you have any questions about this new project or want to know more before expressing an interest, please email us on camera@volunteercentrecamden.org.uk.
