IN FOCUS! Volunteer Week 2025
Summer 2025 Edition - written by Sam Dodd, in conversation with Hafsah hafeji
Every year in June, the UK celebrates Volunteer Week (2nd-8th June 2025). Here at the Farm, we are lucky enough to have a huge roster (approximately 60!) of extraordinary volunteers who help keep this place running. This year, Sam (newsletter Editor) sat down with Hafsah (Volunteer & Community Outreach Manager) to talk about the volunteer programme at Spitalfields, social outings and training opportunities, and the social, cultural, mental, and physical benefits of gardening and volunteering.
Farm volunteers on a social visit to Kew Gardens in May 2025. Image credit: Hafsah Hafeji
Who Volunteers at Spitalfields City Farm?
People often think of volunteering as something that only mostly older people do. Here at the Farm though, the majority of our volunteers tend to be quite young. They can freelance, work part time jobs, or work in an industry they don’t necessarily enjoy so are working towards career changes. Sometimes, they come here for various health related reasons. Often, it is as simple as they want to help produce, and eat, better, healthier food (there is a marked increase in societal awareness of the chemicals used on supermarket veg and the lack of nutrients in mass produced food). It can also be linked to a desire to be more self-sustaining, and ‘homesteading’ principles or pickling/fermenting practices: lifestyles that are often quite difficult to achieve in small, city flats and bedsits. And often, our volunteers want a green, calm and un-pressured reprieve from their computers, desks or overcrowded homes.
We do our best here to up-skill and prepare our volunteers for any paths they wish to take professionally or personally. This can look like providing references; sharing relevant training and job opportunities; finding networking opportunities or attending partner spaces that run relevant events as a team; or helping people in other ways to find similar communities and open doors that could improve their onward prospects. We are well-connected with local and further afield East London spaces that intersect with our Farm’s values and mission.
Our longest serving volunteer is Frank. He has volunteered with us for 22 years, and in 2023 received a long-service 20 Years award.
Farm volunteers on a social visit to Kew Gardens. Image credit: Hafsah Hafeji
What are the benefits of volunteering at a Farm specifically?
The benefits of working with plants and animals are well-documented. It differs from other types of volunteer work because of the direct and very literal connection it fosters between us and the earth. Working with soil, plants, animals and nature generally can bring a calm, routined clarity to the mind. We have always had volunteers who come for mental health reasons. Working with nature regulates us, too - the Farm is a relaxing space where people can recharge, make community, and even start again in life. There’s very minimal management going on; just guidance. As we skill our people up, we entrust them with co-caring for a shared space. Our volunteers are absolutely essential in running our Farm well, and we could not remain open without them.
We have a number of local partnerships with organisations, who we take volunteer groups or individual referrals from. The hostel next door, Daniel Gilbert House, come once-monthly as a group. We also work with Providence Row, who come once-weekly as a group; and we take referrals from autism services, social prescriptions from GP’s and NHS mental health services, and from caseworkers working with people from various supported living situations.
Animal care volunteer training at the Farm. Image credit: Hafsah Hafeji
Valuable cultural exchange: which non-native plants do we choose to grow, and why?
There is an extraordinary amount of value for our volunteers (and also visitors!) in learning about plants and growing practices that are indigenous to other parts of the world. We have a Bengali men’s group that visits from the Brady Centre regularly, a group called Sustainably Muslim who visit often too, and our local community is predominantly Bangladeshi. As a food growing space within this community, it is absolutely essential that we always grow food reflective of local people’s childhoods. Thanks to Lutfun’s skill with varieties like the Kodu, purple lal-saag red spinach, lab lab beans, and other various South Asian vegetables we grow - but also the skill-sets of many volunteers (such as the women-only Coriander Club we run) - many people are amazed and moved at what we’re able to grow in such a cool climate. It is a hugely important cultural connection; it starts conversations and connections between people of different backgrounds and educates. People remember growing these plants in their childhood: seeing them here connects these people - visitors and volunteers alike - with old memories.
One of our volunteers Sean, weighing and selling veg in our Safari Tent on-site. Image credit: Hafsah Hafeji
What changes have you made since taking up post?
We now run volunteer socials - this was introduced as a way of enabling better team cohesion (so many of our volunteers come in on different days, so sometimes don’t know each other well); as a social element for those who want it; and as a way to keep us better connected to other similar spaces and projects. In May we had an outing to Kew Gardens (pictured above), before that we visited our friends at Stepney City Farm, and we run training sessions on-site for volunteers in specific elements of animal or garden care too.
We are also migrating a lot more of our processes (forms, site sign-in, etc) and data online - although to remain accessible, we do still have everything in form version and translated into Bengali.
And we now hold quarterly volunteer update meetings, with our second one taking place a few weeks ago. Our CEO Phil attends these, which from feedback has had the effect of making volunteers feel much more included in Farm developments. He talks them through anything they need to know coming up or being planned/consulted on, and it also connects them up with the staff team a lot more effectively. We want them to feel equally as involved and valued in the life of the Farm as paid staff do. They are just as essential.
Lastly, we have recently recruited for two Visitor Engagement Volunteers, who will be carrying out this role on weekends. It is so exciting to have dedicated, uniformed individuals who welcome and signpost people around the site on our busiest days. They will be a source of knowledge on all things Farm, and a welcoming, friendly presence. This will also be invaluable for getting more reliable data on visitor demographics. We are a free and openly-gated space, which means we don’t track who visits - but it also means it’s slightly trickier to tailor what we do better for visitors. We would like to improve on that where we can.
To all visitors - please say hi when you’re here! Our volunteers are always happy to chat.
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