I’ve been volunteering at a charity shop for a while now and I thought I would share with you my experience. I first started to volunteer at the charity shop as I wanted to find a work experience placement with college. I wanted to learn new skills and gain more experience in the working environment. I am known as a Retail Volunteer as I volunteer in one of the charities shops.

I volunteer at the shop once a week for a couple of hours. At the shop I do lots of different tasks both with customers and in the stock room. To begin with I might help sort through lots of the donations we have been given; I go through each bag making sure we only price items which are in good condition. The donations we get range from clothes to books, accessories and lots more.

I will then go through all of the clothing items we can sell and put each one on a clothing hanger and put the correct sizing cube on each hanger too. I make sure that each item is priced before putting each item out on the shop floor.

Another job I do is stock rotation this is where we bring stock from the shop floor back into the stock room to create more space for more recent items to be put out.

I sometimes may research the donations the shop gets so that we can tell customers more about the product for example old books or cameras.

To begin with I helped to make the shops window displays. I now create some of the window displays by myself. We base each window display design on a theme for example orange and gold or we might do a window display based around a current event like the World Cup or a season like the Christmas season.

When making the window displays I first try and find a main item or piece of clothing that stands out to me I then work with other items to create the feel and look I want the display to have.

Here I am finding clothes for my window display design I am also dressing the mannequin in the clothing I have chosen.

One of the very first window displays I created was based on the colours orange, cream and gold. This was because I had found a lovely orange dress I wanted to put into the window I then found cream and gold items that worked really well with the orange.

When creating window displays I not only have to find clothing for the mannequins but also accessories to go with the items of clothing. For example jewellery,shoes and belts.

I also make bric a brac window displays. This could be making a window display for a upcoming  sport event like Wimbledon. To create a window display based on this theme I may use tennis balls and tennis rackets with tennis shoes. I may also add some books about the sport into the display.

Here is a window display design I am starting to make based around Wimbledon 2018.

I made a window display based around The World Cup 2018.

Here are some photos of my window display based around The Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I steamed a wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses as well as finding bric a brac items for the display too.

Lastly I have just recently started serving customers at the till independently!

I would definitely recommend volunteering at a charity shop if you are interested in working in retail or you want to work in the fashion industry. I also think you would enjoy volunteering in a charity shop enjoy if you like being creative and love fashion.