Hello my name is Mukith Miah and as a staff member, I lead for volunteering in the National Trust.
I'm also a National Trust volunteer and it's been a real privilege in honour for the last 13 years
to work alongside our volunteers. Volunteers have always been the backbone of
the National Trust and in 1895 it was volunteers that founded the National Trust
and I'm really confident that if they were here today, they would be proud of how the National Trust has evolved.
Across the organisation we have thousands of volunteering opportunities and they include the National Trust Chair,
our Trustees, archeology volunteers, retail volunteers, house volunteers and many more.
You'd be really surprised with the breadth and depth of our volunteering opportunities.
In June we're coming together to celebrate and recognise our volunteers and thanking them for everything
that they do. Today you're going to be hearing from some of our volunteers.
I volunteer because I love people, I love their diversity, their different stories their characters.
I volunteer for the National Trust because I get to meet some great people, have lots of laughs, get to work in beautiful
landscapes like this, learning new skills - I've just been out walling today -
and chances to get covered in mud. When does that happen normally?
You can tell they're very interested in what they're seeing and they want to know a little bit more about it
so you you do what you can to bring it all to life and I like doing this and in return quite often they give you information
about themselves and their backgrounds and it's surprising how often you can find a link somewhere.
What I enjoy most is meeting people and sometimes people who come in I know,
and that creates extra interest. Also introducing people to the carriage collection.
I've always had a love of history and getting involved in archeology and I'm at that time in my life when I can actually choose now
so I've decided to get on and do things now in my life that I really always wanted to do
and so I'm absolutely delighted I'm being allowed these opportunities really and thoroughly enjoying it
and learning a lot about history and archeology as I can.
The nature and everything, I really like it because it's a nice park.
It's like a dream come true for all of us, I'm communicating and making my parents proud.
We still do lots of what I would call the maintenance stuff so we're doing walling like today.
We do paths, strimming, fencing, but more and more we're also involved in what I like to think of as legacy projects.
We put in tens of thousands of trees in the last couple of years, we're doing new hedgerows for wildlife habitat,
green corridors, we're doing wildflower meadows, so basically there's a big move to make the
area we look after better for wildlife and more habitats and that's super rewarding.
We are National Trust volunteers, it's so interesting. It's interesting as a craft, it's interesting scientifically,
it's interesting ecologically and at all three levels I find beekeeping absolutely fascinating.
It's also socially very good, there's lots and lots of beekeepers they're all different
and they're very passionate about what they do.
Simply getting outdoors, getting stuck in. From working at home on a computer every day, coming outside picking up some tools,
building things like fencing, some revetments and areas like this gets exercise meeting other people socialising, It's perfect for me.
We do a bit of everything, there's lots of construction of board walks,
and taking down fences and stuff like that which is good fun and then also bits of planting
or looking after the natterjack toad pools and things like that so a big range of stuff.
We want to really inspire more volunteers to join our organisation, we have a range of opportunities,
they might be one-off volunteering opportunities, they might be regular volunteering opportunities
it might be corporate volunteering opportunities or supporter group opportunities, whatever we have
we'd like you to get involved with us. We want to thank you, our volunteers, our staff and our supporters,
for everything you do. It is you that make the National Trust special, thank you.