The trust is run by its four trustees, but we are quietly held up by a small number of volunteers — readers, translators, stewards — who lend us a few hours a fortnight or a single Saturday in the year. None of these roles require experience; all of them require care.
We will never have a staff team. The Scheme will not allow it, and the village does not need it. What we do need, four or five times a year, is a few extra pairs of hands and eyes — to help us read applications carefully, translate letters into the right register of Welsh, and welcome the village in at our annual open day. The four roles below are the ones we are usually looking to fill.
Tue evenings · 18.00–20.00 · once a fortnight
Grant-application reader.
Sit alongside a trustee for an evening once a fortnight in the side room of the Memorial Hall (or remotely by post, if you prefer) and help us read that fortnight’s applications. You will not vote on grants — only the four trustees can — but you will read with us, ask the obvious questions, and help us sort each letter into the right one of the four programmes. What you bring: a careful eye, plain-spoken kindness, and willingness to read a half-page letter slowly. Welsh or English: either. Team lead: Marina Marzelos.
Correspondence as it arrives · ~3 hours a month
Cyfieithydd · Welsh-language translator.
Help us reply to English-only enquiries in good plain Cymraeg, and translate Welsh letters into English for the small number of trustees whose Welsh is rusty. We aim never to make a Deiniolen villager write to us in their second language to ask for help. What you bring: fluent Welsh; an instinct for the warm, careful register the trust writes in; comfortable working from a paper letter or a PDF. Team lead: Glyn Gruffudd.
One Saturday in November · 10.00–15.00
Open-Day steward.
Help us welcome the village in for our annual Diwrnod y Cyhoedd at the Memorial Hall — pour tea, hand out application forms, sit alongside any first-time visitor who feels shy about asking. The day usually has a slow steady flow of forty to sixty people; we want every one of them to feel welcomed by name. What you bring: a friendly manner, the ability to make a passable cup of tea, and a willingness to listen first. Team lead: C Brian Price.
January and July board weekends · ~4 hours each
Treasurer’s assistant.
Help our treasurer, Gwyn, reconcile the trust’s small set of bank statements and grant cheques, twice a year, in the weeks running up to the January and July board meetings. What you bring: bookkeeping experience welcome but not required; reliable arithmetic; a willingness to ask “are we sure?” before we sign anything. Team lead: Gwyn Oliver Jones.
Apply to volunteer.
If you would like to help with any of the above, please tell us a little about yourself and which role you are interested in. We will write back within five working days. There is no closing date; we add volunteers when the existing volunteers can no longer manage the workload, and we will be honest with you if there is currently no need.
A day with each volunteer.
Four short scenes from a working week with the people who help us. None of them are paid. All of them are essential.
Tuesday evening
Sera, application reader.
Sera reads the fortnight’s applications with Marina, in the side room of the Memorial Hall, between 18.00 and 20.00 every other Tuesday. There are usually three or four letters; sometimes there are none. She makes the second pot of tea.
Wednesday afternoon
Carys, Welsh translator.
Carys translates the English-only enquiries into plain Cymraeg for our replies. She does about three hours a month, from her own kitchen table; the Welsh Academy dictionary on her desk is the same one she used at college in 1978.
First Saturday in June
Llinos, open-day steward.
Llinos has stewarded the annual Diwrnod y Cyhoedd every year since 2019. She brings her own tea-urn and her own apron; the Memorial Hall ones, she says, never quite work.
First Saturdays of January & July
Hefin, treasurer’s assistant.
Hefin reconciles the year’s cheque-stubs with the bank statements for Gwyn on the Saturday before each board meeting. The arithmetic is small; the courtesy of double-checking is large.
What our volunteers say.
Two short notes, posted on the kitchen wall at 9 Deiniol Road.
I had not held a fountain pen in twenty years before I started reading for the trust. The pen is back in my pocket; so, slowly, are the people I had stopped listening to.Sera, application reader, Deiniolen
Three hours a month, in your own kitchen, in your first language, with a dictionary you already love. Tell me a better volunteer role than that.Carys, translator, Clwt-y-bont
Volunteer-trustee handover at Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi after the autumn meeting, October 2025.
Or a different kind of help
If a small donation is easier than a Tuesday evening, that helps us too.
