charity shops

Gill’s Story

December 20, 2023Blog Hospice Stories Volunteering

Gill recently gave two days of volunteering in our Bramley Retail Hub through her workplace, Co-Operative Bank. She shares her experience:

“I’m Gill from the Co-Operative Bank and I recently swapped my day job in recruitment and volunteered at St Gemma’s Hospice’s Retail Hub in Bramley, Leeds for two days.

The St Gemma’s Retail Hub sorts donated items ready to be distributed amongst their 25 charity shops across West Yorkshire or sold on eBay or other online channels.

On arrival, l had a warm welcome and an enlightening tour of the Hub from ecommerce manager, Cherie. There is an eBay team who sift through potentially valuable items that they think they may be able to list and re-sell to maximise the amount a donation makes towards patient care – such as various collectible items of bric a brac, jewellery, furniture, designer clothing and electricals.

Then there are team members who sell items on other ecommerce platforms, coordinate St Gemma’s Christmas cards, sift through general bric-a-brac and who sort through items of clothing generously donated by Joe Browns to support the Hospice. There are also PAT testers to ensure the safety of electrical items including Christmas trees, stereos, gaming consoles etc., that are intended for resale. It really is an interesting place and a hive of activity!

I was then introduced to Dave, Andrew and Steve who are regular and dedicated volunteers on the book team and whom I worked with for two days. I really enjoyed working with these guys, plus they fuelled my productivity with a constant flow of tea which was good.

A continual stream of books is donated daily by the public, often surpassing what can be stored and sold in St Gemma’s charity shops, so lots of the books are sold via online platforms.

I was tasked with scanning or typing in the ISBN code on the back of each book. We also looked out for any books that appeared potentially valuable; these were passed over to eBay Team for them to research and list on eBay. The eBay team are currently listing a donated copy of The Hobbit from 1959!

I scanned a grand total of 1461 books – it was quite addictive!

The two days went really fast and I really enjoyed myself. If anybody is looking to volunteer in Yorkshire, I would highly recommend spending time at St Gemma’s. They are a fantastic team of hardworking and friendly individuals, who are dedicated to making a meaningful impact and will always welcome volunteers.”

If your workplace offers volunteering hours, come and spend them with us! Pop our team an email on corporate.volunteering@st-gemma.co.uk to get started.

Pride Month 2023: Reflecting on a Year of Progress

June 20, 2023Blog Latest News

St Gemma’s Hospice welcomes everyone regardless of people’s age, gender, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or diagnosis. Over the past year, LGBTQ+ inclusion is an area we have focused on, with staff taking the lead and collaborating to learn what best practice looks like and how best to meet everyone’s needs.

Back in June 2022, we celebrated Pride Month with a Pride-themed ‘catch up with cake’ for staff. This informal get-together was an opportunity for colleagues to come together and kick-start conversations about how we can make St Gemma’s more inclusive.

In August, we joined the Leeds Pride parade. This was well attended by staff, and St Gemma’s presence at Leeds Pride got a great response from other attendees.

During the staff wellbeing week last October, Dr Ellie Kane gave a talk about transitioning. This access to knowledge helps colleagues to better support each other, and also informs patient care and how we support the needs of our LGBTQ+ patients and families. Caring for everyone who needs us is, and always will be, central to the ethos of St Gemma’s.

We have implemented the optional inclusion of pronouns for staff to use in their emails. Including pronouns allows staff to show solidarity and create an environment where colleagues can be comfortable sharing their pronouns, and there is no obligation to where people don’t feel comfortable doing so.

Moving into 2023, we have introduced Pride badges that staff can choose to wear to show they are a listening, friendly, and responsive ear. Before wearing the badge, staff take a pledge to be an ally, signposting people in need to organisations and local contacts who can provide more specific assistance, and commit to speak up and call out hate.

While all St Gemma’s staff and volunteers are here to support anyone in need, we hope wearing the badge will allow anyone, including patients, to feel more comfortable approaching a colleague and discussing LGBTQ+ topics.

Along the way, colleagues have met to discuss how they would like LGBTQ+ issues to be represented and we have created a staff network open to everyone, encouraging people to learn and ask questions. We recognise that not everyone is comfortable in group settings and have also devised a digital suggestion box below where staff can raise anything they would like the group to discuss.

This Pride Month, we held another Pride-themed ‘catch up with cake’ to celebrate the progress we have made together and look forward to joining the Leeds Pride parade in August. Our chain of charity shops have created fantastic Pride displays in their windows; our shops are long-time supporters of Pride Month, representing inclusivity in their communities.

We are so proud of our team for their collaborative efforts to make St Gemma’s more inclusive. This work has been recognised with a 31^st placing in the Inclusive Companies list, and will continue long into the future.

Donna’s Story

May 30, 2023Blog Hospice Stories Volunteering

Donna joined the St Gemma’s family as a volunteer, supporting our charity shops for five and a half years, and now she is employed in our retail team. This is her story.

Donna was new to Leeds and felt isolated at home, caring for her autistic son who she was home schooling. This situation made it difficult for Donna to find employment in her profession as an Early Year’s Practitioner and she found her mental health was deteriorating. She wanted to meet new friends and get out and about.

Donna put a message out on the Leeds Place Facebook community group, and one of our current volunteers responded and said – have you thought about volunteering in a charity shop? So Donna called into our Halton shop and had a taster session to see if it was something that she would enjoy.

She started volunteering in the Halton shop a few days a week back in 2017, and really enjoyed it. Donna went on to volunteer for 5 and a half years!

Donna’s volunteering helped her to gain new skills and confidence, and she is now employed with St Gemma’s as a Bank Deputy Manager.

Donna says: “Volunteering gave me flexibility and has really helped my mental health. The staff and team really helped me to gain confidence.”

Thank you for giving your time Donna and sharing your story – we’re lucky to have you on our team! To find out more about volunteering or being part of our team, please visit our online recruitment platform.

Our Charity Shops are Back!

July 31, 2020Blog Fundraising

Retail Returns

We resumed trading in some of our charity shops a month ago and are very happy to back in so many of your local communities. We began by opening nine of our stores at the end of June, a further two reopened mid-July and we now have a total of 13 shops open. After over three months of temporary closure due to the pandemic, the first few weeks of trading look very promising and it’s great to hear the tills ringing again! View the list of our shops and their opening dates, times and addresses.

We will be reopening more shops in the coming weeks; all news regarding future reopenings will be published on the webpage above and on our dedicated charity shops’ Facebook page.

Jane Kent, Head of Retail at St Gemma’s, says: “Thank you to everyone who has supported the shops and the retail team during recent weeks. It was a huge team effort getting everything ready for the re-openings and putting everything in place to keep the staff, volunteers and customers safe. The one-way systems, hand gel stations and till screens are all working well, and don’t forget that face coverings are now mandatory in shops as of 24th July, which of course will include our shops chain.”

“It was a huge team effort getting everything ready for the re-openings and putting everything in place to keep the staff, volunteers and customers safe.”
Jane Kent, Head of Retail

Stock donations

The shops continue to be overwhelmed with kind donations of stock. We’re so grateful that so many of you kept hold of your donations throughout lockdown ready to donate them to support patient care!

You can drop your donation off at one of our open charity shops, but we would encourage you to book a home collection if you can. The service has been incredibly popular so far and over 1,000 bookings have been taken online alone!

To book a collection, please visit: www.st-gemma.co.uk/shops-collection-request Please note that collections are fully booked until mid-August.

As always, we kindly ask that donations are not left outside any of our closed shops as they are likely to be stolen or damaged and cause disruption for our neighbours.

Smiling shop manager behind perspex screen at till

Volunteers

We are looking forward to welcoming some volunteers back to support the open shops over the coming weeks, where it is safe to do so. We are also conscious that some volunteers do not wish to return at the moment, so we are also actively recruiting for additional volunteers, especially to support the van drivers with collections. If you are interested in joining our volunteering team, full details of our volunteer vacancies can be found at www.st-gemma.co.uk/volunteering.

St Gemma’s featured on BBC Radio 4 recently discussing some of the new challenges charities are facing as they reopen shops. You can listen to the interview online, it starts at 31m 30s.

Interview for Radio 4 taking place in Moortown charity shop

Thanks again to everyone involved in getting St Gemma’s shops back into operation. It’s great to be part of local communities once more and raising valuable funds to support patient care.