Who are Culture Connect?

Established in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 2010, Culture Connect aims to connect cultures together and change lives as a result. What we do - Help people express their cultures by volunteering with us. - Help our volunteers learn new skills, progress and develop. - Connect communities together to learn about different cultures. How we do it - We recruit volunteers from different cultures to develop and run cultural events and activities, usually about food and music. - We work hard as a team to plan and deliver these events to a high quality. - We encourage people from all over Newcastle to come and participate in these events. Why we do it - We believe people in Newcastle should have the opportunity to connect and learn about different cultures. We believe this promotes understanding, respect and a shared identity. - We believe by working as a team our volunteers can learn a huge range of skills to help them develop as individuals. - We strongly believe integration is a good thing, but a two way process. We believe our work fully supports our volunteers in their integration into British life. We recognise people from asylum seeking, refugee and overall migrant communities have fascinating and diverse cultures / experiences that bring a rich variety to the UK. In volunteering with Culture Connect, people giving back to the society around them in helping others to learn about their cultures, experiencing and enjoying multicultural diversity whilst learning new skills and integrating. Culture Connect is working in partnership with JET (Jobs, Education and Training). JET is a registered charity which helps people from the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) community, people who are refugees and New Migrant communities to find work, improve their skills and to integrate into the community. Our volunteer opportunities support people in their integration and employability through areas such as event management, English speaking and communication, Food Safety, Healthy Eating etc, team working, cooking instruction, marketing and promotion and much more. Our volunteers meet every week to plan events. We have a number of different morning and evening meetings each week, to fit most volunteers’ availability (you only need to attend one of the sessions every week). The sessions will be based in different locations in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We are able to refund travel expenses of up to £5 with a public transport travel ticket. Please note that we are only able to engage with adults of 18 years and over at the moment. We are looking for a whole range of volunteers and have a range of different opportunties.