How you can help | Gunwalloe Surf Club

How you can help?

We are keen to give more children a chance to gain surf life saving skills.

But we can only do that if we have more volunteers.

We need support on the beach and in the sea.

On the beach we have many roles. We have our excellent and crucial catering team that provides snacks and hot drinks to our kids and coaches during the breaks. We have volunteers that help in the committee as club chairman, treasurer, fundraiser, secretary, membership secretary and many other roles. We have a club house that needs looking after.

Let us know if you want more information about any of these roles.

Help on the beach

Help with training

For each new group of around 10 kids, we need 4 more volunteers. Such a team of 4 consists of a coach, an assistant coach and two parent helpers. This way we can maintain a safe ratio of children versus coaches, assistant coaches and parent helpers in the sea and to ensure that we have enough lifeguard coverage.

You can start as a parent helper. To be a parent helper, you need to be a good swimmer, enjoy swimming in the sea and enjoy working with kids. You DON't have to be a lifeguard to help us out in the sea.

Many of our current coaches and assistant coaches started out as a parent helper. We provide an induction to new parent helpers to get them prepared for their role.

We also hold a parent helper and coaches safety briefing in our club hut before the start of each beach session.

As a parent helper, you can help a coach deliver a session. We need assistance with delivering the beach part of each session. The beach part often consists of a safety briefing, a warm up and a number of beach activities such as 'flags'.

As a parent helper you may be asked to help out on the beach or in the sea. In the sea you may for example be asked to be a marker in the sea. As a marker you sometimes even don't have to go beyond waist depth but you perform an important role to ensure that our kids stay in a demarcated area within safe reach of the beach.

As a parent helper, you can learn various basic surf life saving skills On-the-job such as tube and board rescues. If you are a confident swimmer (or surfer!) you can come out with an inshore swim and provide extra safety cover for the kids, alongside our qualified coaches.

And once you really have a taste for it (which often happens!), the club can help you get formal qualifications such as a SLSGB Level 1 or Level 2 coach or even Surf Coach Safety or a Lifeguard badge!

And if you already hold another formal qualification in aquatic skills or training/teaching skills, there are options of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and 'Fast tracking' through our 'mother' organisation SLSGB.