We're recruiting! 
We're looking for friendly and enthusiastic people to join our volunteer teams as we look to open our cafe and shop throughout the week. You can read more about the roles and how to get involved here.  


Volunteer Teams
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There are many different ways of contributing, give as much or as little as works for you. We can offer lots of training opportunities too - food safety & hygiene, first aid, mental health first aid - and we can build a learning programme for you to focus your involvement on skills or confidence that you want to develop. We can support young people volunteering in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme or who just want to get volunteering! 

Have a read, let us know which areas of the project you think you are interested in, then we can chat about the ways you can get involved.  Use our contact form (on the Contact Page) to get in touch. 
 
Saturday Café & Market: We set up a café and market in the village hall every Saturday morning. Our Saturday volunteers do a wide range of jobs, including manning the stalls (selling great local produce) and running the café (whipping up legendary bacon sandwiches, serving customers) and generally making people feel very welcome.
 
Friday Cafe: We open our shop and run a simple lunch cafe on Fridays. Our volunteers do a variety of tasks including helping to run the shop, serving tea, coffee and cake, taking lunch orders, preparing lunches and making sure all of our customers feel welcome.

The Talking Garden: We have a great outdoor space at our new home. Our garden team have already transformed it, building two new raised beds, installing water butts, and growing tomatoes, salad, corn, spinach and herbs in the last few weeks of the summer. Next year a garden of produce and flowers! The gardeners meet on Mondays from 10-12 but we're interested in hearing from anyone who'd like to get involved whether you are available then or not.

Talking Lunch: On the first Wednesday of every month we host our monthly lunch club, for over 18s, a great inter-generational get together with delicious food. Volunteers set up for the lunch, serve food, clear tables, wash up, run the raffle, and of course eat and chat with lunchers.
 
Food Surplus Cafe: On the third Wednesday of every month a group of volunteers collect food that would otherwise go to waste from the Oxford Food Bank, and then whip that up into a delicious feast which they serve in a 'Pay What You Can Afford' cafe in Talking Shop. Volunteers work as a team to do a variety of jobs - including collecting from the Food Bank, planing the menu, preparing & cooking up the dishes, setting up the cafe, serving food, clearing tables, washing up and of course eating and chatting with customers.

Spoke Shop: Our team of local volunteers, trained by the brilliant Broken Spoke Cooperative, run regular bike clinics from spring to autumn.

Table Tennis: Volunteers run our weekly table tennis club for all ages and we now have teams playing in league matches!
 
Communications: Volunteers coordinate our communications, design our leaflets, deliver them door to door, write our emails and manage our social media to keep everyone up to date.
 
Admin & Finance Teams: Teams of people behind the scenes make sure all the administration of the different Talking Shop projects is up-to-date and manage the finances.
 
The management Board: This team supports the operational teams and works to ensure the project is working in pursuit of its charitable aims and in accordance with its registered rules. The board is elected from the membership, by the membership at the AGM.