Volunteering
Eastleigh Swim Club relies heavily upon a dedicated volunteer workforce. Swimmers' parents or guardians are expected to help in some capacity, be it assisting with fundraising, being a member of the Committee, helping with administrative tasks, organising or providing support in whatever capacity you can manage. We welcome help from anyone within the Club whether you can offer a commitment to a role with defined regular tasks or whether you prefer to help on an occasional basis.
There are many roles in the club for which you can volunteer:
Swimming Lessons
- Teaching Assistants and Level 1 Teachers, to help run the swim school lessons.
Coaching Team
- Assistant Coaches and Poolside Helpers, to help plan and run the squad training sessions. We also support and mentor swimmers age 14+ who are participating in Swim England South East Region's Young Volunteer programme.
Committee
- Various roles with varying levels of commitment including Chair, Treasurer, Secretary, Membership Team, Open Meets Team, Marketing Team, Social Media Team, Club Shop Team, Welfare Team, plus opportunities to volunteer for short-term roles such as the organisation of a specific club activity such as a presentation evening or an Eastleigh Schools swimming gala. Committee members are elected annually at our AGM but the committee can bring other volunteers onboard as required.
Competition Support Team
- Various roles including Team Managers, who look after the swimmers on poolside, and Officials, who perform important roles such as timekeeping, stroke judging and refereeing the races. We occasionally require volunteers to chaperone the swimmers on minibuses to competitions.
Note: Eastleigh Swim Club takes child welfare very seriously and DBS checks all volunteers who work with children directly. You may also be asked to attend a safeguarding training course.
For further information on volunteering or to suggest other help that you could offer, please contact General Enquiries on our Contact Us page. Let us know what type of role you are interested in or how you feel you could help. If you prefer to speak to someone directly, please include your telephone number and the best times to contact you. Alternatively, speak to any Committee member whenever you see them, either on a Club night or at a Gala. Please help in any way you can, no matter how small - it really will make a tremendous difference. Thank you.
Volunteering Procedure for Poolside & Land Training Sessions
(Last updated: March 2016)
Poolside and Land Training helper volunteers are ideally older Club swimmers looking to support and train younger Club swimmers under the leadership of our Coaching staff.
Volunteering also helps older swimmers to re-affirm their own swimming techniques and promotes interaction between the Club squads.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, please let a Coach or Committee member know that you would like to make an application and follow the procedure below. All safeguarding procedures and checks have to be completed before any volunteering can commence.
- The applicant writes a letter to the Committee outlining why they want to volunteer. It should also include their date of birth, address, contact telephone number, parent name and email address (for both the applicant and parent if different). Finally, the letter should state which evenings and times you are available to volunteer.
- Eastleigh Swim Club Committee will consider each written request and will seek advice from the Head Coach and Coaching staff as to available session openings and candidate suitability as a volunteer helper.
- The Committee will then invite the volunteer to an informal interview/discussion with a Coach and Committee member to assess the volunteer's ability to communicate, their body language, and personal confidence for the role. This is essential as they will be with younger swimmers, so need to be able to conduct themselves appropriately.
- Successful candidate volunteers will then have a 2-week trial and throughout this trial the Coach responsible for the sessions will report back to the Committee and Head Coach. The final decision will then be made and the volunteer will be notified if successful and be told the regular sessions the Club can offer them. If a volunteer was not successful, they would be given advice on how to improve and change so they can, if they wish, re-apply after a few months.