Volunteer

We rely on volunteers to help in production, especially for binding up the braille Bible volumes and packaging them for dispatch.
If you live locally to Market Harborough in Leicestershire, U.K. and can regularly spare a few hours each week, get in touch to find out if there are vacancies.

What does it involve?

Visiting the Compass Braille production area of Torch House on a Tuesday morning brings a feeling of satisfaction as you capture the behind-the-scenes buzz of the ministry. Often it’s a quiet buzz of simple and sure movements as hands deftly select, straighten, coil and combine stacks of embossed pages into neatly bound volumes.

Currently six volunteers help Paul Rhodes in production, totalling 27 hrs weekly. They find the work immensely rewarding.

1. Lamination or ‘encapsulation’ is actually the first step of the process. This is aptly managed by a single volunteer who comes in on Thursdays to prepare covers for the Tuesday crew. Unperturbed by the chugging noise of the big embossing machines, this volunteer goes about creasing blue cardboard covers, sending them in a steady stream through the encapsulator, and then slicing them apart and folding them before hole punching each one in preparation for binding.
2. Nearby, stacks of braille paper sit on shelves, fully embossed with the particular language codes required for the Bible volumes currently on order from various overseas countries.
3. Two stacks of paper make up each volume and several volunteers participate in this stage of the assembly process. Each stack is fed onto a coil inside one half of the blue cover, and each coil crimped together before the two coils of the two halves are joined by a thin metal rod that’s hooked and folded at the ends.
4. Every volume receives both a print label and a braille label before being boxed. It takes between 43 – 45 volumes to make one complete Bible. Repetition is the name of the game as about 500 volumes are assembled monthly.
5. Seeing the volumes go out in the post en route to their final destination in the hands of eager blind readers gives joy to our volunteers.

3 ways you can help:

• If you live locally we need volunteers to come in Compass Braille’s Production Room regularly to bind and dispatch braille volumes.
• Wherever you live we need people to publicise the work of Compass Braille to grow our supporter base.
• None of our work is possible without funds. Perhaps you are able to plan an event or scheme to raise money for the work of Compass Braille?