I'm a visitor support volunteer. I became a volunteer because I have a love of
history, particularly the Second World War, a fascination for Winston Churchill
which goes back to my school days - I did a project on Churchill when I was in my
latter years at school - and I thought this is an opportunity to do a bit of
volunteering and I've loved every moment of it, it's been fantastic. I think the
highlight is reaching people who tell me about their family histories because you
get people from all over the world coming here, places like New Zealand and
Australia, and they tell you about their families. They tell you about their
fathers, their grandfathers and it's quite touching and I share that with
them when I think it's lovely.
proud and incredibly fortunate to be allowed to get so close to history that
is still living and still functioning around me. I really hope to gain from
volunteering is stimulation. It's incredibly rewarding but above all just
mentally stimulating. I look forward to getting to learn so much more than I
already know and that's a fantastic opportunity.
because I just you know finished my master's degree and I was looking for a
position where I could explore my love of history but also, you know, gain good
work experience perhaps in a museum because I'm really interested in working
in museums as a potential career and I also saw it as an opportunity to develop
my public relations skills and public service skills as well as a bit of
customer service. I volunteer about twice a month whenever I have a day off and I
use a either weekend, sometimes a weekday. Being in the Churchill War Rooms
makes me feel like I'm kind of taking a step back in time into a really historic
place and I feel very, very honored every time I come
here because I mean we get a lot of visitors but not many, very many people
can even say that they've been through her, have been down here so I just feel
very privileged and very honored to be here and to share it with the visitors. I'm
really impressed with the diverse group of volunteers that we have working
you know for all the branches - they are retired people, they are students, they are
people that still have full-time work, there might be part-timers, but the thing
that connects us all is our love and interest of history. Volunteering makes
me feel good, I enjoy it, it appeals to the brain cells in terms of you, you're going
to learn something either from the exhibits or from your visitors so that's
that's definitely good thing. Secondly, you feel as though you are enhancing the
visitor experience, you're giving them information that possibly they don't
normally, they wouldn't normally get and you sometimes get this sort of look from
your visitors when they suddenly say to themselves 'I didn't know that, that's
really interesting and maybe I'm going to ask a few questions about it' and
that's very rewarding. Definitely, the best bit about my role is the
interaction with visitors. I mean for anybody coming here you've got to
realize you're going to meet some very interested people but you're also going
to meet some very interesting people. Last week there was a veteran who came
up to me and started talking about landing on Juno Beach on D-Day and he
and I started talking because I've been to the beaches. We started talking and
the end I stopped talking and just listened to him because what he was
about to do was to go back to Juno Beach for the first time since 1944.
You can almost smell the cigar smoke and and and seeing the scratches on Winston
Churchill's armchair, in his in his meeting room, made by his own fingernails,
it's almost like touching history.