Written by Musufing Ceesay, who has recently joined the people and places team as volunteer support co-ordinator.

Hi there to everyone, my name is Musufing and I’ve been working alongside Dianne who has been guiding me through the essentials of matching volunteers to the various projects. We started the process in November 2024 when I also met Sallie.

Tiny bit of background – I’m from the UK, Leeds via Jamaica, I lived in Gambia for 8 years and am there most of the time with my partner. I’m a mum of 4 grown adults. My career has encompassed: community health awareness/education, peer health education, education welfare, youth work, performance arts and creative writing, radio presenter, cultural heritage writer/researcher/worker, voice over artist.

Back to People and Places! I was connected to P&P by Dr Adama Bah who I have worked with for a few years on another one of his many projects, Mboka Festival of Arts, Culture & Sports. He thought I’d be a good fit.

I really like the P&P philosophy of responsible volunteering which I had never heard of and this was my main reason for agreeing to get involved.

Well back in November, during a P&P intro/’strike while the iron’s hot’ few days of a workshop at Sallie’s,  I was presented with P&P’s process document and thought, what have I gotten myself into! The idea is simple and quite clever as the document is like a ‘bible’ for placing P&P volunteers, taking you through EVERY STEP of the process from them enquiring about placements, to them returning home from their placement abroad. This clever document was devised, I believe by Sallie and Dianne . I also had the pleasure of meeting Mariama Bah during the said extended training weekend.

This was a great opportunity to meet everyone, including Harold via a videocall, and become familiar with the background, vision and inner workings of P&P.

Dianne and I meet via Zoom every week and she has been taking me through the process, meticulously, of matching volunteers to these amazing projects and ensuring that the growth and capacity of each of the projects is primary in the matching process.

At first I was given some ‘dummy’ volunteers (sorry Sallie as you were one of these, no pun or slur intended) to practise on before being unleashed on actual ones. Honestly I felt a little lost but the more Dianne and I connect at our weekly meeting, and I ask my many questions, everything has started to fall into place.

Dianne is thorough!!!!! This has been the key in my finding my stride in matching, now actual volunteers and building connections between them and the projects. There is still a way to go but it’s happening.

It has been a great learning experience to add another string to my bow, and I look forward to getting my training wheels fully off and going for it.

Volunteers, here I come as a new era of People & Places comes forth!