Harmony Foundation helping the community once again for our second volunteering day of 2021

The Harmony Foundation team have been back out in the community on their second volunteering day of 2021. This week our team set about helping ARK at Egwood, near Merriott, South Somerset with some overdue jobs.

ARK at Egwood, is a land-based day facility with 12 acres of land and comprises of animals, horticulture, and communal buildings, and offers a range of activities, experiences, and support services to improve health, wellbeing and opportunities for all members of the community. Their objective is to provide individuals with a meaningful and worthwhile experience, whilst gaining skills, knowledge and confidence, to live life to their full potential, by enabling participation and inclusion.

ARK relies heavily on a team of volunteers to help with the day to day running of the place. COVID, as with many organisations and charities, has had big impact on this and they do not have as many regular volunteers at this moment in time, so Harmony’s offer of helped was gladly received.

A very different day to our previous volunteering day down at EAQ Manor Farm, we were lucky to have the sun shining on us whilst we got set to work on a couple of overdue tasks for the team. 10 enthusiastic volunteers got stuck in and sweaty to help improve and rebuild the tranquil pond space as well as building a fence for a future animal pen. Owner Nigel Bell said a job like this for one of his team would take over a week, so to get this done in a day is fantastic.

Nigel Bell, Owner of ARK at Egwood commented, “Having Volunteer days like today with Harmony Fire is a massive, massive help to us here at ARK. We have lots of big jobs, which we have great intentions of doing and getting on top of but to have a team of people that come in on mass that we can condense a big job into one day is a really big help.”

Danny Rider, Surveyor Harmony Fire commented, “Being involved in a day like this is fantastic. It was an eye opener seeing what the farm does for disadvantaged people and I think that is what made me want to help out, knowing what we were doing will end up helping them in future. It was great to see kind, generous people doing what’s best for others. For us as a team it is a great team bonding exercise. For me being out on site most of my working day it gives me the opportunity to come together with some of the team I wouldn’t always work with”.

ARK are providing an amazing safe space in their community for all who need it. The Harmony Foundation team feel proud that we could step in and offer help so that the ARK team can improve their facilities for all to benefit.