We are a volunteer led charity. Our model is simple, we strive to keep our overheads low, so funds raised by our members pay for support and activities for Reach children and their families.
There are many ways into volunteering with Reach:
Become a Branch Coordinator: Are you a person with an upper limb difference? Are you the parent of a child/young person with an upper limb difference? Could you help bring Reach families together in your local area?
As a Reach parent, I’ve experienced firsthand the vital role of support groups in providing empathy, guidance, and a sense of belonging during challenging times. When my daughter was born with a limb difference in 2014, Reach offered us crucial support and camaraderie. I’ve served as a Branch Coordinator since 2020, dedicated to paying forward the invaluable support I’ve received by helping new families in confidently navigating the early years and nurturing children’s confidence and resilience.
Jay, Co-Branch Coordinator, East Anglia, Summer, 23
Become a RAW (Reach Activity Week) Mentor: Are you an adult 18+ with an upper limb difference? Would you like to spend a rather busy week, a full 7 days, supporting young people with upper limb difference aged 10-17 participate in our annual activity week. The week is always full of adventures, new experiences, challenges and magic bits, its physical hard work, its emotional hard work, and the difference you make is tangible!
I’ve always felt I needed to prove my ability to people, even now when I’m in a new environment. I think people assume that I can’t do certain things; it often comes from an honest or kind place, trying to do something for me to help me. I had always wanted to be as good as or better than my friends and I remember coming back from that first camp and thinking I’d managed to do things my friends had never even tried!
Tom, RAW Mentor, Winter, 23
“I went back every year until I was 17 and every year I came back with more confidence and more friends – people I still speak to now.
Become a Young Volunteer: If you are a young person age 14-17, who is a member of a Reach family, who wants to gain experience and credits volunteering, it may be your doing your Duke of Edinburgh Award or maybe you’re wanting to develop an impressive CV to help you in your next steps – well we can help – you might want to fundraise for us, speak to power, or campaign on disability issues, or help out on our events, we have branch, regional and national events happening every month all over the UK and would welcome your support
Helping behind the scenes: If you are at the beginning or end of your work life: at college or university, just retired, or you may be returning to work after a gap and want to build up your confidence and/or have space now to give back, then a placement with a small, well regarded, national charity like Reach might be just the thing. With us there’s a wide variety of functions to get involved in e.g. data inputting, marketing and PR, communications, events, monitoring and evaluation, telephone support, sign posting, current project work and fundraising. The list is long and so are the benefits, we can try and enable you in areas of most interest to you, support you with supervision, potentially work in partnership with you to develop project work; provide feedback to internship academic supervisors, involve you in a wide variety of learning opportunities, and act as referees.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer and would like more information, please feel free to contact the Reach team email: reach@reach.org.uk T: 0300 3650 078 or complete a volunteer application form here:
We request references and undertake a DBS check for all Reach Volunteers as standard.