London Blog

Maria Marin has been volunteering at the Street League offices since November 2006. Maria comes from Majorca in Spain (not sure what she thinks of the English weather compared to home!). The following is a blog about her voluntary work so far at Street League…

I have been volunteering with Street League for 2 years. I wanted to do voluntary work to help me to develop more effective computer skills and furthermore to improve both my written and spoken English. I love to play football and I also enjoy watching it on television. I searched the Internet to find an organisation that related to football, and that could offer me the type of voluntary work that I wanted.

I came across Street League and the reason I chose them was due to their connection with football and also their work with young people from different backgrounds. Moreover they encourage young people to take part in courses, such as coaching and refereeing courses, and CV writing workshops.

I find the work I do for Street League to be very interesting. At the moment I am doing administrative tasks in the office such as inputting the details of the volunteers and players into spreadsheets and files. I sometimes go to meetings with the staff outside of the office, for example I recently attended a meeting with Sony. I also volunteer one Saturday a month at the matchdays at Mile End. Here I help to take the scores for the matches, put up banners and posters, and also sort refreshments for the players.

Since being at Street League I have more administrative knowledge, and developed other skills.

The environment in the office is very friendly and I find the staff funny which helps to create a good and relaxed atmosphere in the office and more relax.

I wish to continue to build and develop my skills, and hope to gain experience in other departments at Street League.