Meet Rosa our Befriending Assistant

My name is Rosa, and I started as Befriending Assistant with Ecas in January 2025.

I train volunteers and match them with physically disabled people who lack opportunities for socialising and fun. Crucially, I make sure the experience is meaningful and mutual for both volunteers and clients by supporting them throughout their match.

Ecas’ matching process is careful and sensitive. I take time to get to know people, their interests and personalities, and their practical wishes, including what times and parts of town suit the volunteer. I introduce volunteers to clients, and after that have regular one-to-one check-ins with both, so I can learn if the match is going well, listen to concerns, and decide any practical next steps.

It is always a joy to meet with volunteers, who come from all walks of life, and are generously giving their time, visiting their befriendee for an hour or two a week. As Befriending Assistant, I enjoy bringing people together and enabling more people to have the positive human contact we all need.

From Africa to Ukraine, beatboxing to conservation!

There are many strings to Rosa’s bow, as her open mind and eagerness to learn lead to a full and varied life. All of this, including her own experience volunteering, helps inform her professional approach,

While I am a befriending assistant two and a half days a week, I co-lead a tool workshop during the other two. I support adults with learning disabilities to refurbish old tools, and put together kits for Ukraine and various countries in Africa.

Supporting learning disabled adults is how I came to appreciate the value of really getting to know someone from outside my normal social circles, embracing people in all their varied ways. I realised I gained more than I gave. I hope that our befrienders feel similarly about their experience.

While support work is a constantly immersive social environment, my role as a Befriending Assistant allows me to go between meeting volunteers and clients, and a more contemplative, strategic approach. This slower pace, mixed with a social aspect, is a good balance for me. The problem-solving of match making gives me something to get my teeth into.

I have previously co-ordinated volunteers for the Forge, a Community Wood and Metal workshop. This lively, improvised community, with its assortment of characters all learning together, developed my ‘try-it-and-see’ attitude.

Being a volunteer has always been a rewarding and experimental activity for me. I started my journey as an undergraduate, becoming co-president of Sussex Universities’ Amnesty International Society. Alongside organising campaigns, I put together my first musical fundraiser: a line-up of musician friends, culminating with a collaboration between that year’s UK beatboxing champion and the runner up. My lack of musical or technological knowledge caused me embarrassment when communicating with the venue, but volunteering threw me out there into the world. It was an amazing night, and a successful fundraiser.

I have continued volunteering in various guises, from working in Amnesty International’s Sudan Team within their International Secretariat, to doing nature connection and conservation with young people, for Edinburgh’s Green Team. Most recently, I started volunteering for Change Mental Health, where I run a creative writing group for men with histories of trauma. The flexibility of volunteering – to dip into different activities, learn new skills, meet new people – has enriched my life.

We thank Rosa for sharing more about her life, and for enriching the lives of those she supports here at Ecas.