Baking charity Bramber Bakehouse needs women volunteers by Sunday

Bramber Bakehouse^1,2,3 runs a free eight-week baking and wellbeing course in Brighton for women who have experienced abuse, exploitation or displacement. It is recruiting volunteers for four roles, and applications close at midnight on Sunday 1 November.

All four roles are for women only. The charity says that is an occupational requirement under the Equality Act, because the volunteers work directly with women survivors of trauma.

Two of the roles can be done from home. Befrienders make a weekly 30-minute phone or video call to a woman who has been through the course, for up to 12 sessions. With admin, that comes to about an hour and a half a week. Mentors do the same with calls of up to an hour, about two hours a week, and are asked to commit for 12 months and to have a basic DBS check. Both must be 21 or over. Training is three online sessions, on 26 November, 3 December and 10 December, from 10am to 12.30pm, and you have to do all three.

The other two roles are in the kitchen on Mondays, 9am to 4pm, when next year’s courses run. The first starts on 22 February 2027. Kitchen support volunteers wash up, set up and clear away, and serve refreshments. Wellbeing volunteers help the programme lead with the wellbeing and life skills sessions, and deliver simple grounding techniques. Training is online on the afternoon of 11 January 2027. For these two roles, the charity pays reasonable travel expenses, and there’s a communal lunch on programme days.

For safeguarding reasons, the charity gives the workshop address only to women accepted onto the course. They are referred by organisations that already support them, and must live in Sussex. Lucy Butt, now the chief executive, started the charity with her friend Hollin in 2014, with help from Great British Bake Off contestant Martha Collison.

One graduate is quoted on the charity’s website: “It was a life-changing experience for me at a time when I was ready to give up.”

Bramber Bakehouse says it may give priority to applicants with lived experience of gender-based violence, displacement or exploitation.