Community Directory: Volunteering

We're a local charity working in the community to support older people, their families and carers. We want everyone to be able to love later life.

We've been working in the local community to help older people for 30 years. We have 40 dedicated staff and over 100 volunteers helping us to deliver services and activities for older people in Enfield.

Our main office is based in Ponders End Library and and our day centre is based in Houndsfield Road in Edmonton.

We rely on your support to keep serving the community. We are supported by donations from the public and some charitable grants.

Age UK Enfield provide high quality services to our elderly community including:

• Information, Advice and Advocacy - Provides information, support and signposting on a wide range of issues including access to benefits and accessible transport, housing, debt and pensions, and much more.
• Falls Stop Service - Provides a range of information, advice, exercises and activities to help people who have had a fall or are at risk of falling.
• Fit for Life - A range of exercise classes, activities and walks at a range of community venues across the borough.
• Memory Care Navigators - support for people from diagnosis; helping them to understand their diagnosis, how to access support and information and connect to other people living with dementia and their carers.
• Planning for later life - Awareness and information sessions on all aspects of planning for later life including will writing, power of attorney, bereavement services, and advanced decisions / statements.
• Home Based Support - provides in-home support from trained, professional and friendly staff, enabling people to continue to live safely and independently in their own homes.
• Veterans Support Project supports anyone who has served in the Armed Forces or National Service and their families, through social events, benefits advice, applying for medals, and much more.
• iCan - supports adults over 18 who have a long term health condition, are isolated or at risk of falling, or near the end of life, to improve their health and wellbeing. Our popular Tea & Chatter sessions is a fun and supportive group which connect and bring people together.
• Memory Meet Up - Memory Meet up offers reminiscence, creative activities and guest speakers for people affected by dementia and their family members.
• Parker Day Centre - a specialist dementia care day centre in Edmonton, providing a range of activities and events for people with early memory problems, to advanced dementia, and their carers, including Maintenance Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (MCST).
• This Girl Can - 12 week exercise programme for women over 50 recovering from long term conditions including cancer.
• Enfield Wellbeing Network

A collaboration between a number of local community organisations, which aims to enable people to set and achieve realistic goals to improve their health and wellbeing.

All donations received, helps us to sustain and develop our services and makes a huge difference to our ability to improve the life of Enfield’s older people who have somewhere to turn to, when they need help and support.

Last updated: April 2022

Services offered

• Enfield Care attendant scheme
• Enfield day support
• Enfield Dementia Cafe
• Enfield Monday peer support Group
• Enfield Singing for the brain Southgate
• Enfield Wednesday peer support group

Last updated: October 2014

The welcoming and friendly drop-ins provide an opportunity for people living with cancer to relax, access support, information and meet others who understand how cancer can affect you. Taster sessions of complementary therapy are also available.

Last updated: January 2021

CAPE is a group of carers and parents (and relatives) of adults aged 18 years and over with learning disabilities in Enfield.

CAPE offers:

• ​Support and Friendship
• Advice and information
• Voicing Carers' issues

Last updated: January 2021

Citizens Advice Enfield is a charity that offers free, accessible,quality advice to anyone who lives in Enfield. We can help with all kinds of problems whether they are housing, employment, benefits, debts or immigration issues for example.

Aims & Principles

The Citizens Advice service provide free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to everyone on their rights and responsibilities. It values diversity, promotes equality and challenges discrimination

Our Service aims:

• To provide the advice people need for the problem they face
• To improve the policies and practices that effect people’s lives

History

We have been providing advice in the London Borough of Enfield since 2nd September 1939. We started in tiny offices in Fore Street Edmonton, staffed by a handful of volunteers. Today, most of the people you will meet at our current offices in Ponders End are still volunteers, but they are supported by a small team of paid staff.

Last updated: July 2018

Our mission: To support, empower, and enrich the lives of Older Members in the Community.

Last updated: January 2021

Enfield Carers Centre is a local charity offering support and advice for all unpaid carers in the borough of Enfield. A carer is someone of any age who provides unpaid support to family or friends who could not manage without help. This could be caring for a partner, relative or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or substance misuse problems. 1 in 8 adults are carers.  We offer social activities, opportunities to meet with other local carers, relaxation sessions for some 'me time' and practical advice and information.

Last updated: October 2014

We are a small charity with big ideas based in the London Borough of Enfield. We provide services and social events for the local community, in particular those of Caribbean descent.

Enfield Caribbean Association (ECA) was established in 1986. We work to eliminate racial discrimination and for an inclusive, fair and equal community, in which people of Caribbean origin can develop their full potential as visible, positive contributors and participants in the life of the Borough of Enfield.

Last updated: January 2021

Enfield Conservation Volunteers carry out practical conservation work in Enfield's parks and countryside on alternate Sundays. An opportunity to gain experience in traditional crafts such as hedge laying, coppicing, bridge building and path construction. No experience is necessary as training will be provided. More information is available by clicking on the title link above and on N21.net.

Last updated: October 2014

Enfield Disability Action (EDA) is a pan-impairment organisation run by and for disabled people of all ages. EDA works to, and promotes, a social model of disability.

As an umbrella organisation for local disability groups, EDA shares training, policy development and best-practice guidance to facilitate the development of this section of the local third sector.

EDA works strategically with Voluntary and Statutory partners, provides input to local planning and consultative mechanisms, conducts research, enables project development, sources funding, provides a core organisational infrastructure, facilitates quality-assured practices and hosts the following services:

• Advocacy & Community Forum Project – for groups and individuals
• CancerLIFE – also offers Cancer Awareness and Healthy Living sessions
• Challenging Abuse and Tackling Hate Crime
• Deaf Project – working with Deaf people who use British Sign Language, and with deafened and hard of hearing people who do not use sign language, including those who have caring responsibilities
• Udirect- formerly known as Direct Payments Support Service
• Disability Information & Advice Project
• Enfield Advice Plus Partnership Project
• Independent Living Project - including Enfield Wheelchair Users Forum & Self Directed Assessment

Last updated: October 2014

Enfield Mencap helps adults with a learning disability to improve their quality of life and move towards independence and a fulfilled lifestyle, working with them and their families through a person-centred approach to life planning.

We provide a range of quality services both at The New Opportunity Centre in Edmonton and out in the community.

All services are developed around an individual service user’s needs and aspirations, identified through regular planning meetings and person-centred reviews. Service users are encouraged to take a holistic view of their lives encompassing leisure, work, education, social and home life.

Last updated: January 2021

EVA provides a wide range of services for voluntary sector organisations and for individual volunteers, including training courses,  advice on setting up, running and developing voluntary groups and a detailed list of volunteering opportunities in the borough.

EVA's Volunteer Centre helps individuals find volunteering tasks and prepare for them.

Last updated: October 2014

Previously known as Enfield Parents & Children

Every Parent & Child (formerly Enfield Parents & Children) is a registered charity working for the benefit of children, young people and families in the London Borough of Enfield and surrounding areas. We offer services to children, young people and their families to support with advising on accessing educational provision for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, applying for school places, young people’s mental health and wellbeing and skills and confidence building.

Our Mission is to offer children in our community opportunities to learn, develop and thrive.

Services

SENDIASS - Special Educational Needs & Disability, Information Advice & Support Service

"My Time" - Child Counselling Service and Volunteering Service

Last updated: January 2021

The Friends of Arnos Park are local residents who work hard to ensure that the park continues to be a well maintained and safe place of recreation for the whole community. We lobby the London Borough of Enfield and work with them to improve the tidiness of the park, increase its bio diversity and fundraise for improvements. Our work includes some maintenance of flowerbeds, pruning of trees and shrubs and landscaping work.

Sadly, as budgetary constraints increasingly restrict the amount of resources provided by local authorities to parks, the work of Friends groups becomes more and more essential to maintain and improve them.

We plan to stage several fun events each year and hope you will join us in working together to make our park an even better place. If you have any suggestions please contact us:

• facebook.com/FriendsofArnosParkLondon
• twitter.com/arnosparktweets

If you are interested in becoming involved as a volunteer or even as a committee member, we would love to hear from you.

Last updated: July 2023

Hands On London, a registered charity with the Charity Commission, was founded in 2010.  We are the local affiliate of the global umbrella organisation, Hands on Network (HON), which is headquartered and registered in the United States. Hands on London (HOL) strives to be the first point of contact for individuals in London who want to be involved in community service. Using an international model of volunteerism that has been utilised successfully in over 250 locations in the US and 14 other countries, HOL acts as an intermediary between volunteers and charity/community groups.

Mission

• To help charities, not-for-profits, and community organisations meet their volunteer needs.
• To help individuals and organisations to give back to the community in a meaningful way.

To accomplish our mission, we partner with local charities/community groups to develop volunteer projects, then recruit, train and manage volunteers and the  projects. We organise a range of volunteer projects including activities with children, assisting in soup kitchens, helping to improve the environment, helping the elderly, helping people with disabilities and animal welfare projects.

Last updated: October 2014

Middlesex Association for the Blind was founded in 1922 to provide support to people with a visual impairment across the Middlesex region. Today we provide a range of services to people living in the London Boroughs of Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Haringey and Richmond.

Last updated: January 2021

A charity founded to support cancer sufferers in Enfield

The Nightingale was formed in August 2002 to support people in the London Borough of Enfield affected by cancer. The fast-growing population of the borough and the strain on NHS funding meant that many people were not receiving additional support beyond their cancer diagnosis and NHS treatment. The Nightingale was formed to fill these gaps in the lives of people living with cancer.

The Nightingale is a registered charity (Charity number 1094435) and is a company limited by guarantee. (Company number 4515844). The charity is governed by a board of trustees with a range of skills of experience including ‘but not limited to’ medical, finance, HR, marketing and communications.

Counselling and support services both for patients and their families have been at the heart of the Nightingale’s mission right from the start.

The criteria for support has always been those who live, work or receive their treatment in the borough.  We serve all those living with a cancer diagnosis, their families and partners.

Last updated: January 2021

At Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice we help families make every precious moment count.

We help seriously unwell children and their families make the most of the special time they have together. The majority of babies and children we support are unlikely to reach their 18th birthday. Our staff and volunteers provide clinical, emotional and practical support to families across North and Central London and Hertsmere.

We make sure children and families have access to the support they need, where they need it: in their homes and at the Ark, our state-of-the-art children’s hospice building in Barnet.

Last updated: January 2021

North Enfield Foodbank is located at 2 Lumina Way, Enfield, EN1 1FS (off Lincoln Road).

How a foodbank works

Food is donated.  Schools, churches, businesses and individuals donate non-perishable, in-date food to the foodbank. All food given out by foodbanks is donated.

'Supermarket Collections' are one of the main ways that food is donated: These are food drives held at supermarkets where volunteers give shoppers a 'foodbank shopping list' and ask them to buy an extra item or two for local people in crisis.
Food is sorted and stored

Volunteers sort food to check that it's in date and pack it into boxes ready to be given to people in need.

Frontline care professionals identify people in need. Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, CAB and police identify people in crisis and issue them with a foodbank voucher.

Clients receive food. Foodbank clients bring their voucher to a foodbank centre where it can be redeemed for three days emergency food. Volunteers meet clients over a cup of tea or free hot meal and are able to signpost people to agencies able to solve the longer-term problem.

Donations for North Enfield Foodbank are accepted every Saturday morning at Palmers Green United Reformed Church, Fox Lane.

Last updated: December 2015

North London Cares is a community network matching north Londoners to volunteering opportunities to support our neighbours in need of a little extra help, time or companionship.

Our ambition is to build relationships between people who might not normally interact, bridging social divides and bringing our communities closer together.

Last updated: October 2014

North London Samaritans covers the London Boroughs of Barnet, Enfield, and Haringey.

North London Samaritans have been based in Bounds Green, London N11 since 1975. We are a Charitable Incorporated Organisation with around 100 volunteers and no paid staff.

That means that all the things that keep the service running – managing the rota, routine administration, overseeing branch finances and premises management, recruitment, selection and training, fundraising, keeping the Centre clean and stocked with tea, coffee and biscuits – are carried out by our volunteers. All our costs must be covered by our own fundraising. This is a dynamic and friendly Samaritans branch, with volunteers who are just ordinary people, carefully selected and trained.

In late 2018, we moved into a new, purpose-built Centre, which houses both our call centre and a community hall that we also use to host our training sessions.

Every year, this branch alone provides emotional support to more than 10,000 callers, a large proportion of whom are experiencing profound feelings of distress or despair; some are suicidal. People from all walks of life contact us, mostly from across the three London Boroughs of Enfield, Haringey and Barnet, but also from other parts of the UK or overseas.

If you would like more information about volunteering at North London Samaritans, please click here. If you would like to support our work in other ways, please click here.

Venue Hire

North London Samaritans owns and manages Shaftesbury Hall, Herbert Road, Bounds Green, London N11 2QN. The hall is now open for booking from £25/hour (£15/hour registered charities), and is ideal for community events, local groups, school activities and private functions. It's equipped with:

• Sprung wooden dance floor
• Fully-fitted kitchen
• Projector and PA system
• Various seating configurations for up to 60 guests

To find out more about Shaftesbury Hall or to enquire about making a booking, please visit www.shaftesburyhalln11.com

Last updated: January 2021

Projects

Last updated: January 2021

We offer information, friendship and support to local people with Parkinson's their families and carers.

We also organise regular events and social activities, such as drop-ins, bowls, pub lunches and outings. Join us - and meet other people affected by Parkinson's in your area.

Last updated: October 2014

Pymmes BrookERS (short for "Pymmes Brook Restorers") are a group of Londoners who want to make the Pymmes and Salmons Brooks more lovely!

London’s rivers are heavily polluted by misconnected sewers, and also by the toxic heavy metals that wash off our roads after rain. Wetlands will help to clean the water naturally and will provide beautiful habitat for wildlife. We’d like to see more kingfishers, herons, frogs and riverfly along Pymmes Brook!

If you live in Barnet, Enfield or Haringey, or even further afield, and would like to get involved, get outside, and get wet, then get in touch!  There’s plenty to do, so message us to let us know your ideas and how you’d like to help!

Read about the project on the Thames21 website and visit our Facebook page.

Last updated: November 2018

The Ruth Winston Centre is a registered charity whose mission is to promote independence, well-being and activities for the over 50s in Enfield. Ruth Winston Centre has around 1100 members and offers 60 classes and/or activities per week exclusively for the over 50s. In addition to learning and staying connected with others, we promote healthy living and well-being through our faciliation of additional services such as blood pressure checks, chiropody, hairdressing, flu jabs, stroke clinic, health trainer advice and support to name but a few. Ruth Winston Centre is a place where information of interest to the over 50s may be presented and exchanged. For those who otherwise would spend their days at home alone it is a vitally important resource for the over 50s in this borough.

Last updated: October 2014

Simply Connect Enfield is a Social Prescribing service for the borough of Enfield, managed and delivered by Enfield Voluntary Action (EVA).

We’re on a mission to help you find local community services, activities and support that can really help you with whatever issue you’re struggling with at the moment.

Maybe you’re looking to meet new people - or get some advice or support for a friend or family member? Or you might be wanting to find out about exercise or social clubs, or how to get involved in a local charity?

Community services can provide specialist support too on a range of topics, such domestic abuse, helping to manage your finances, housing issues or bereavement support.

We can support you to improve your health and wellbeing by:

• Focusing on what matters most to you
• Connecting you to local community services and activities, and
• Helping you to reach your goals and ambitions.

Whatever it is you’re looking for, there’s something for you.

Last updated: January 2021

Solace Women’s Aid is an independent charity working across London, with a dedicated team of staff and volunteers, providing life-saving support to more than 11,000 survivors of domestic and sexual violence a year. Solace Women’s Aid works to empower survivors to rebuild their lives through a holistic range of specialist services including refuges, advice, counselling, advocacy, support groups and family & children’s projects enabling them to live their lives independently, free from domestic and sexual abuse.

The charity recognises that breaking free from domestic violence or escaping sexual abuse is only the start. This is why they not only provide practical advice and a safe space to live, but also help women and children recover emotionally and build a future free from abuse.

It doesn’t happen overnight and takes courage and determination but, with Solace’s help women will continue to be able to develop the confidence and independence they need to rebuild their lives.

One Solace service users sums it up “Your bruises go away and your bones mend. But it’s the despair, being hopeless. It’s a very dark place to be. Solace has given me hope.”

Visit www.solacewomensaid.org  to find out more about Solace Women’s Aid services in Enfield and see how you can get involved to make difference to the lives of women and children.

Solace Women’s Aid’s confidential helpline FREEPHONE: 0808 802 5565

Last updated: June 2020

The "Stroke and PAT" programme is a collaborative project between the national charity Pets As Therapy, founding Director Sallie Bollans​ and the Ruth Winston Centre​.

Having introduced Animal Assisted Interventions to the multi-disciplinary therapy programme within neurological rehabilitation at a local hospital in 2004, Sallie witnessed first hand the positive effects that occurred when stroke survivors were given the opportunity to interact with dogs during therapy sessions. Working alongside Pets As Therapy volunteer teams, regular visits were arranged for those patients wishing to participate, utilising the dog as a focus when working towards a range of rehab goals.

Frustrated by the limitations and restrictions that inevitably occur when working in a large organisation, but empowered by the testimonials of participating stroke survivors led to the vision, and consequent birth of the community based Stroke and PAT project.

Last updated: November 2014

More than 10 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK each year. At the same time food poverty is a huge and growing problem, with 1 in 10 children in the UK living with parents who struggle to put food on the table. This means an estimated 870,000 children in England go to bed hungry because their parents are unable to provide the meals they need.

Free of charge, the Felix Project collects good quality food from suppliers. We check it’s fresh and then deliver it to charities so they can give vulnerable people a healthy meal or snack. Put simply, we’re saving food and changing lives.

We have warehouses in Enfield and Park Royal where we use daytime volunteers.  Evening volunteers work from a number of van and courier collection points in various parts of London.

Last updated: May 2018

We have a vision of a strong and generous London - where residents, business and government act collectively to create a fair and good society for all who live or work in the capital. Known for prosperity and opportunity (even in current times), it's easy to forget about the thousands of Londoners left on the margins. Wealth and poverty live side by side, with middle class terraces, green spaces and trendy high streets blending into run-down estates and empty playgrounds. Poverty, isolation and crime affect too many.

Last updated: November 2014

The Shane Project is a charity for African/Caribbean and Ethnic Minority People living with MS, their families and carers. It was founded in April 2002 by Norma McFarlane, whose two sons were diagnosed with MS. It is named after her eldest son Shane who was diagnosed with Primary Progressive in 1993 but sadly passed away in December 2003. The lack of available support, which was further compounded by isolation, prejudice and stigmatisation that she and her family endured from the local community, prompted Norma to set up the Shane Project.

Last updated: November 2014

A private Facebook group administered by Love Your Doorstep Enfield which is used to advertise appeals for volunteers.

Last updated: May 2021

Our  shop volunteers are helping us beat cancer right now.   

In 2019/20, 14,000 volunteers gave 3.1 million hours of their time and sold items totalling £15million. These funds are helping us start new clinical trials and research treatments as we speak.  

If you  volunteer  at a Cancer Research UK shop,  you too could make a real difference to what we can achieve.  Nothing we do would be possible without  amazing volunteers  like you.  

You’ll also  gain valuable skills to help develop your CV and experience.  And you’ll volunteer alongside a wonderful team of passionate, friendly people  who will support you  every step of the way.  

Volunteering is open to everyone and no experience is required.  So,  if you’re looking for a new challenge, we’d love to hear from  you.  

Last updated: August 2023