Back Up Star: Tracy
25 February 2020
This month’s Back Up star is Tracy, one of our amazing office volunteers.
After Tracy sustained a C3/C4 incomplete spinal cord injury in 2014, she got in touch with Back Up. We were there for her in the early days of her injury, teaching her power chair skills and providing support over the phone. After we helped her rebuild her confidence and independence, Tracy decided she wanted to give something back. She reached out to us and enquired about becoming an office volunteer.
As an office volunteer, Tracy has helped every team at Back Up in one way or another. She has updated internal calendars for our communications team, supported our outreach team find venues for wheelchair skills training, and assisted us with admin for courses and family mentoring.
Charlie, our family & mentoring manager, says “I’ve been working with Tracy for three years now, and I can honestly say she’s been a life-saver. She supports services users directly from the office, and helps our staff indirectly by coordinating training and finding venues.”
Another one of Tracy’s important tasks is helping our mentoring team by completing check-in calls. This is when she contacts our mentors and the people they support to see how their mentoring sessions are going. These calls are crucial for both parties, as it gives them a space to provide feedback and help improve our mentoring service. Sophie, our spinal cord injury mentoring coordinator, says this is why she nominated Tracy for Back Up star.
“I nominated Tracy because of the brilliant support she’s given our mentoring service. She’s makes sure our service is on track, takes feedback, and monitors the impact of what we do. When we have so many mentoring relationships to keep tabs on this is completely invaluable. Thank you, Tracy!”
Tracy has now been as a volunteer for four years. As well as volunteering in the office, Tracy is also one of our mentors and has also helped us fundraise at bucket collections. We are very grateful for her volunteering efforts – they have helped us support even more people affected by spinal cord injury.
Do you want to support our life-changing services like Tracy? Fill in our online volunteering interest form.
