Meet parish volunteer Jenny from Wales.
Volunteer with CAFOD and help to bring our work to life in your community.
Start here if you're new to CAFOD.
CAFOD representative will help you find the best way to get involved.
Meet parish volunteer Jenny from Wales.
Volunteer with CAFOD and help to bring our work to life in your community.
Start here if you're new to CAFOD.
CAFOD representative will help you find the best way to get involved.
After retiring from teaching and eager to make the most of her newfound free time, Jenny connected with a small but dynamic CAFOD team in Cardiff and discovered she could pursue her passion for caring for the environment as a CAFOD volunteer.
After qualifying as a primary school teacher, I joined a local Catholic school, but it was only when a new dynamic headteacher arrived that I began to learn about CAFOD’s work. The new headteacher not only publicised the mission of CAFOD and fundraised during Lent and Harvest but was the catalyst for the revival of my faith. School fundraising was not only the children selling homemade cakes at break time or counting coins they had collected along the playground markings, but more ambitious projects such as inviting parents in for a fish and chip lunch with the children.
On my retirement from teaching my husband and I moved to South Wales where, with time on my hands, I volunteered for CAFOD, where I met a small but dynamic team in their Cardiff office led by Therese Warwick. It was through this team that I learned more about CAFOD’s mission including helping communities which would be most devastated by the effects of climate change .
In my parish there had been CAFOD volunteers but now they were becoming elderly, I overcame my initial nerves to speak in front of congregations during the Lent and Harvest appeals each year and then felt it was time to do more.
In 2016 I completed the last part of the Spanish Camino with friends from my parish raising the target £4,000 to buy a clinic in Africa from the CAFOD World Gifts catalogue. I also completed a CAFOD Lent Walk before thinking that maybe organising parish social events might not only bring our parish community together but be a good fundraiser. We have had two Burn’s Night celebrations to date, as well as Christian Unity Week and Lenten soup lunches which have not only publicised CAFOD, but seen generous donations.
Having been an Eco School’s co-ordinator Pope Francis’s ‘Laudato Si’ and ‘Live Simply’ was close to my heart. With CAFOD’s support I joined them in marches in both Cardiff and London, meeting like minded volunteers who shared this passion.
I felt very privileged to receive my certificate celebrating 10 years of volunteering for CAFOD. It was unexpected and honestly quite unnecessary as CAFOD gives me such a worthwhile vehicle by which to put my faith in action and do what I can to help my brothers and sisters in need.