Community / Voxter House urgently searching for new treasurer and more volunteers
THE HISTORIC and much-loved Voxter House in the North Mainland urgently needs to find a new treasurer within the next four weeks.
Roughly just “three or four” committee members remain at the outdoor centre, with a replacement treasurer needed to keep Voxter afloat.
Chairman Dugie Gunn said they would “have to ask ourselves what the future of Voxter is” if someone is not found in that time.
“That would be a terrible thing to happen, and I’m sure there will be people out there that would hate to see that happen,” he said of the possibility of closure.
“We really do need someone that has a bit of experience or that has a good mind for numbers and book-keeping.
“It’s a community asset, it’s a fantastic facility. It has so much potential, we could really take it much further with more people.”
Voxter, which sits just outside Brae, has previously been in the position of urgently needing more volunteers to come aboard and help out.
But Gunn said the dedicated and hard-working committee had managed to get Voxter – which saw major renovations in recent years – into a much better position.
“It wasn’t in a great place a few years ago,” he admitted.
“We’ve managed to get it back onto an even keel.”
The departure of their current treasurer, however, has left the committee in a difficult position ahead of what is set to be another busy year.
Gunn said the committee had “some really good ideas about where we want to take it” – all that was left was the people to actually carry those through.
“Over the last few years the committee has been quite small,” he said.
“With us losing our treasurer, we thought it would be a good time to ask the community to help us reinvigorate it and push it to the next level.
“We’ve been working really hard just to keep the place running, and we have a good number of bookings, so really the more people we have the less any one person has to do.”
Voxter has two committees – one for the day-to-day management of the outdoor centre and another for trustees overseeing the overall work they do – with Gunn the chairman of both.
He is hoping that someone will come forward to replace him on the first committee, to allow him to take “more of an oversight role”.
“I’m quite happy to keep supporting Voxter,” he said.
“I’m very, very passionate about it.”
“It’s a community asset, it’s a fantastic facility.” – Dugie Gunn
Gunn said Voxter’s key aim was to provide a “safe and fun environment for every schoolchild in Shetland to get out and enjoy the outdoors”,
“Voxter is really special,” he said.
“It’s relatively sheltered, there’s farm land around us, you have access to a small wooded area above us which is absolutely fantastic.
“That is something that we’re really keen for people tom be able to continue to experience.
“A lot of people aged around 30, 40, 50 year old have memories of coming to Voxter. That is something we would like to continue as a tradition for young people to enjoy.”
Gunn said anyone who wanted to join up as a volunteer or committee member could commit as much, or as little, time as they were able to.
He said the outgoing treasurer believed she had spent “two to three hours a week” dedicated to Voxter work.
But he said anyone who was able to give up any time at all be welcomed.
And Voxter is keen to branch out and become a home for larger events all-year round.
“Voxter has the scope to be a great venue for various events throughout the year,” Gunn said.
“Bookings tend to be very low in the winter, so we’ve thought about running events, maybe corporate events.
“We would like folk to come onboard and take on one event, to organise and run it.
“If that’s all they want to do, we would say ‘thank you for your time’.
“But if they wanted to make it an annual event, or help out more often, we would welcome them onboard.”
Gunn said they were aware that many volunteers already gave up so much time for things like hall committees.
He said they wanted to get to a stage where office-bearers had a set time limit, such as three or four years, before they stood aside for new faces.
“We recognise the fact that people don’t want to join a committee and get stuck on it for years and years,” he added.
Anyone who is interested in the treasurer job at Voxter, in becoming a committee member or just helping out in any way at all, can contact Gunn on either voxterhouse@outlook.com or 07967716751.
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