On Tuesday 24th May Surrey Hills Society hosted its first Volunteer Open Evening at Zero Carbon in Guildford. The opening evening started with a short presentation from our Chairman, Gordon Jackson and Project and Volunteer Coordinator, Christa Emmett. Prospective volunteers were then invited to find out more about the wide variety of volunteering opportunities on offer. The Society is incredibly varied in its activities, and we were very excited at the amount of interest shown in different roles, ranging from helping at shows, conservation, putting on events and assisting with administration.
Following on from the interest shown at the open evening, the Society is now working closely with the Surrey Hills AONB Board and Surrey County Council to develop a new team of volunteers called ‘Surrey Hills Conservation Volunteers’. This is all based around working with responsible communities and individuals to enhance the Surrey Hills landscape for people and nature.
An area of focus for this summer is to work with volunteers to monitor and maintain several promoted walking and multi-user routes within the Surrey Hills. This includes auditing existing routes, looking at signage and the condition of paths, completing accessibility audits and identifying areas where improvements could be made. Towards the end of the summer, we are running a training course to complement this, and we are very excited to be working with Surrey County Council’s Access and Countryside teams to deliver this.
We are always keen to engage more people with the Surrey Hills so if you think this could be of interest, or you would like to find out more about other volunteering roles within the Society, then please get in touch.
Christa Emmett
Project and Volunteer Coordinator
Surrey Hills Society
Mobile: 07548 831574