We at the Kingston Pound are always amazed at the amount of volunteering that occurs in and around our borough. For example Kingston Hospital, has one of the best volunteering teams in the country and this helps enhance the reputation of the Hospital. Around the wider borough there are many other brilliant examples of selfless acts and willingness to roll sleeves up to get involved.

It takes some courage to get out and volunteer and some people just cannot face it. Some are simply too busy and some have a full schedule of volunteering already.

“Social participation, as well as active engagement in volunteering and religious activities, are found to be associated with better mental and physical health and well-being” Korean Study Hin Moi Youn, Soo Hyun Kang, Sung-In Jang & Eun-Cheol Park https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-020-02724-8

The Kingston Pound offers us the chance to participate during our everyday lives and it can also be a private act. Every K£ spent makes a small but important contribution and these small contributions add up! If you had the chance to visit a bee hive you will see bees carrying in small parcels of pollen. Each contribution on its own is small, but when the hive is 60,000 strong, the results are spectacular.

We can participate in any way we like but consider the cumulative effect on our great local businesses if we can steer some of our spend towards them. They not only need it but they deserve our support through the challenges ahead. Participation like this can be daily and we effectively vote for some change with every K£ spent and we don’t need to wait for Election Day.