Seaview Voices

Hi to everyone in the Seaview community! My name is Thalia and I have been completing my Year 12 work experience here at Seaview for the last week.

When I first secured my placement at Seaview, I was excited to gauge an understanding of what goes on behind the scenes of a charity. I am keen on working for the benefit of a community in my future career, so doing my work experience here has been valuable to me.

For most of my placement, I have been working in the admin office, which I have found to be really interesting for learning how a charity is run, but also what happens day-to-day while working in an office. I have learned about some aspects of charity finance, alongside doing research and making posters and social media posts for Seaview.

One of my days during this placement was spent with volunteers for the charity, which I found to be very eye-opening and significant for my experience here as I found out more about what the volunteers do and some of the situations that the service users are in. The volunteers are a lovely group of people, and watching everyone collaborate during the volunteer meeting was something which endeared me even more to this line of work. In addition to the volunteer meeting on this day, I was able to participate in Michele’s boundary training, which was great as I got to be involved in discussions which were quite complex due to the sensitive nature of the topic.

It has been really interesting to discuss with staff members and volunteers the work that takes place here, such as the Hub, everything provided to those in need by the kitchen, and the Help Make a House a Home project, all of which everyone is very enthusiastic about and seem to help the community a great deal.

Spending time in St Leonard’s has also been fascinating because it is completely different to where I am from – I go to school in Gravesend and live in Rochester (both in Kent) and so while I have experienced life in a range of different settings, St Leonard’s and Hastings are very different for me. I have enjoyed the warmth of the local businesses and people, despite a lot of vulnerability in the area there is a great community, which I am sure Seaview is a big part of.

I have found Seaview to be an incredible and welcoming organisation which provided exactly what I wanted to experience for this placement. The work that everyone does here is admirable and really reflects on the environment that has been created by the team.

Thank you all for reading,

Thalia