Mayar Capital and the Techy Tea-Party!

After a few months of deliberation, the time had come to make a decision regarding team volunteering!

As Mayar has grown in recent times, so too has our desire to give back to society, play our part and help in some small way.  The environment, children and the elderly were identified as our three key priorities. After donating a tree to each of the attendees at our Annual Partners Meeting in August, we then decided to partner with volunteering charity, Timebank.

Timebank has been in operation for 20 years and works with businesses to engage their staff in volunteering covering 5 key themes.  These are social isolation, community cohesion & integration, health & well-being, education and employment and environmental & regeneration.  

After speaking to Callie Clay - Programmes Operation Manager - about how we would most like to help, we decided that a 'techy tea party' would work well as our first company volunteering session.  These are a way of bringing together volunteers and guests from local Age UK branches to chat on Zoom with a focus on the volunteers helping the guests to resolve tech issues.

As we were now mid-pandemic, and with social isolation amongst the elderly an ever-worrying issue, we were keen to proceed as soon as possible and Calley kindly arranged the session for us. 

Prior to the event, Calley sent across a sheet for each volunteer to identify our preferred area of tech expertise. (or lack of in some cases!)  Calley confirmed, as we expected, that in many cases - simply talking was the more important aspect.

On the day, we logged into Zoom and had the pleasure of meeting our four Age UK guests. After a brief intro each volunteer was matched with a guest and headed off into a private chat room for an hour to discuss aforementioned tech issues.

My personal experience was essentially a one hour chat with a very lovely lady based in Hackney with no family close by at all.  Her main form of contact throughout the pandemic had been with some kind neighbours and her carer.  Ironically my guest (who was in her 80’s) regularly drove her carer to the shops as her carer did not have a car.  

We touched on a brief tech issue - running software updates on an Android phone - and chatted about life.  My guest told me some fascinating stories of her youth and life living and working in Hackney.  We laughed lots and the hour was over before we knew it.

Aziz, Marc and Stefan enjoyed similar experiences with their guests - managing to resolve the issues at hand and, more importantly, chatting about life and providing a human connection for one precious hour.

Stefan even arranged a follow up call with his guest as they had more to discuss!

At the end of the session we all left our private chat rooms and met again to say goodbye.  Everyone - both guests and ourselves - feeling positive and uplifted.  

Our next session with Age UK will take place next week and we are planning further volunteering sessions in the months ahead.  We are keen to continue supporting those in social isolation during the pandemic.  Further updates to follow as our volunteering journey continues.

For more information, visit the Timebank website.