A small rota of volunteers keeps the trust on its feet. We are looking for, at most, a handful of new faces each year.

You will be paired with another befriender and assigned two older neighbours within walking distance of your home. You will visit each of them on a Sunday afternoon, on alternating fortnights, between 14.00 and 17.30. You will put the kettle on, read the post if asked, and make a single-sheet log of anything that the trustees should know.

You do not need to have done this kind of thing before. You do need to be a kind and patient sort of person who is content to sit with another person's silence. Most of our befrienders are themselves in their sixties and seventies.

A seasonal role between November and March. You will read the week's Winter Doorstep referrals on a Tuesday evening, ring each household for a kind word, recommend a grant amount of £80 to £200 to the chair, and write the folded letter that goes with the grant. There is a small training pack and a co-caseworker for your first two weeks.

The role suits someone who likes paperwork, likes being quietly accurate, and is happy to make twenty short telephone calls a week.

Drive a small route across the parish over the third weekend of December, dropping ninety hampers door to door in pairs. You will receive a printed route sheet, a contact card for the central marshal at St Mary's hall, and a flask of tea before you set off.

This is the only role we open to family volunteers — older teenagers often come along with a parent, and we are grateful for the extra pair of hands.

Pack ninety hampers in one quiet morning at the back of St Mary's hall. The Mothers' Union runs the packing line, the volunteers form a long table down the centre of the hall, and we send everybody home with a mince pie at noon.

This is, traditionally, our most popular role. Sign-up opens in early November.

Although the parish larders are not run by us, we are always pleased to recommend new volunteers to them. A typical shift is three hours on a Thursday or Friday morning — stocking, weighing, helping a household to choose a bag of groceries, washing the mugs at the end. Training is given by the larder team on arrival.

We will pass your name to the larder co-ordinators if you tell us in your enquiry form below that this is the role you are interested in.

A trustee role becomes vacant on the board roughly every eighteen months. Trustees are appointed by the existing board on the advice of the parochial church council. The board prefers to appoint trustees who have already volunteered with the trust in another capacity for at least a year.

If you would like to be considered for a future trustee vacancy, please mention it in your enquiry below — the chair will write to you when the next opening arises.