What is a Pioneer?
A Read Easy ‘Pioneer’ has the task of doing the groundwork that is needed to establish a Read Easy group in a new area. Once accepted by Read Easy UK, the Pioneer’s goal is to form a committee, whose members can then together take responsibility for setting up and running the new group. The Pioneer role can be taken by just one person, or two people working together.
What is involved?
As a Pioneer you would need to network with a range of organisations in your locality to establish first of all that there is a perceived need for a group there. You would then need to publicise the scheme across your community to build support amongst other potential volunteers. This would include organising and inviting people to an open meeting to find out more, when a representative of Read Easy UK would come and do a presentation.
Once a committee was established and affiliated to Read Easy UK, we would provide a comprehensive start-up package of training and resources to make the setting up and running of the group as straightforward and effective as possible.
What skills would I need?
To be an effective Pioneer, volunteers need to have initiative, confidence in networking and communication, and the ability to inspire other people to get involved. Pioneers also need to have the equivalent of at least a day a week to spare, and at least some of this time needs to be within the working week, in order to network with other organisations.
What support would I be given?
After an initial application and interview process, Read Easy UK would provide you with a one-to-one advice session before you started, a Pioneer Handbook, publicity materials and plenty of on-going support and guidance.
More details of what is involved in becoming a Pioneer are provided in our Introduction for potential Pioneers. This can be sent to you by email on request.
Please note: In order to expand our work in a manageable way, we are – at the moment – only looking for new Pioneers in certain regions where we have a Regional Adviser. The list to the right provides a guide to some of the places where we would particularly like to start groups in these regions, but if you consider your area equally merits a group, please contact the relevant Regional Adviser.
We plan to appoint further Regional Advisers in the North West and North East. Please bear with us and keep an eye on the website for developments.