Mentors Team Report 2016 11

Report for Freegle Mentors November 2016

Mentors currently have 9 members and 1 Board observer.

Mentors are:
Christian, Diz, David, Tom, Cooky , Jo and Alison. Sheila is the team coordinator Wanda is acting co-coordinator and Andy is our Board observer.

November has been a busy month for mentors as usual.

This month, Betty from Wakefield decided to give her group up and handed it to mentors to look for new moderators. Robert who runs the next door Leeds group has decided to take the Wakefield group on as the permanent owner, so it was a swift handover of a caretaker group causing as little disruption to members as possible.

Leon who runs Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff asked us if he could take on Rhonnda Cynon Taf. He recruited a new moderator to help him and asked us to train her. Heather is now trained and set up with modtools and is helping him to moderate all of his groups.

Frome was declared an abandoned group and disaffiliated from Freegle. As it was a large group with a good post record before it was abandoned, we recreated it and moved the members across to the new group. Frome is already receiving lots of posts and new members, although it’s still in the hands of caretakers.

Mentors are a hard working team who are all very stretched and we really could do with some fresh volunteers. All you need is patience and the ability to moderate and help another group owner to moderate, or to run an extra group or two. You also need to be happy to follow best practice guidelines on any group that is nationally owned and to use a fixed set of rules to moderate caretaker groups . If you think you can be a mentor, please get in touch at mentors@ilovefreegle.org

Please bear in mind some of these groups may need long term caretaking as volunteers can be difficult to find.

All Caretaker groups are added to modtools. It takes a few minutes extra each time you moderate to clear the messages on extra groups.

If you are thinking about going away for Christmas and the New Year, please don’t leave your group un-moderated, we are happy to help with cover. Contact us on mentors@ilovefreegle.org you can just remove us from the mods list on your return.

We come again to the list of groups under the care of caretakers. If any mod teams local to any of these groups would like to take any of these groups on as permanent new owners, please contact us

• Barking and Dagenham
• Bicester
• Blackwater and Yateley
• Blaenau Gwent
• Brewood, Codsall and Stretton Freegle
• Bury
• Cambridge
• Cannock Freegle
• Chelmsford
• Cheslyn Hay Freeworld recycling
• Derby
• Dudley – Black country Freeworld
• Durham
• Eastwood
• Frome
• Havering
• Llanelli
• Llyn Peninsula
• Nottingham
• Plymouth
• Rochdale
• Scunthorpe
• Skegness
• Skye and Lochalsh
• South Tyneside
• Taunton
• Thrapston
• Trafford
• Warminster
• Warrington
• Washington
• Wrexham
• Yeovil

The list below is of those who just need a little help or are just being cared for temporarily. We are NOT looking for any new mods on these groups. This list is only to give an idea about what mentors are doing .

• Amber Valley
• Blaby
• Ealing
• Fenland
• Hackney
• Hunts
• Kensington and Chelsea
• Leamington and Warwick
• New Forest West
• Stafford

Mentors are here to help groups any way we can. If you are struggling to cope, please let us know, we are happy to help out.

If you know of any group that is being left unmoderated for long periods, mentors can be contacted in strictest confidence. We would rather help out and get things back on track before a group ends up being abandoned.

mentors@ilovefreegle.org

Mentor team

Links:

• Mentor Team Remit
• Previous report Mentors Team Report 2016 10
• Following report Mentors Team Report 2017 02