Sarah Kersey

Community Development Worker

Contact Sarah at sarah@teigncvs.org.uk

Sarah is an experienced, not-for-profit professional, with over 22 years of experience, working within sector infrastructure support, community engagement, community development, project management, service and organisational development. Sarah’s first experience of infrastructure development was as a project manager between 2000-2003 in the London Borough of Harrow where she developed a programme of support and forum to build the capacity of voluntary sector in IT as council and VCS services were just starting to become available online. Within the field of VCS infrastructure support she went on to manage a Volunteer Centre, has been an elected representative of the voluntary sector in many forums, been a non-executive director of the Association of Volunteer Managers, been a trustee of Scotland’s largest grant making charity, Voluntary Action Fund, which distributed £20million and provided organisational development support to groups across Scotland and was a founding member and director of a workers cooperative which specialised in volunteer management, fundraising, PQASSO mentoring, charity and coop governance and trustee development in west London. Sarah’s a qualified PRINCE 2 practitioner.

Sarah has been an active member of the community wherever she has lived, she describes herself as a ‘serial volunteer’. First volunteering in 1998 for the Citizens Advice Bureau. Her voluntary work continued and has predominately been with environmental projects, social justice campaigns and developing small grassroots initiatives. In 2012, Sarah was nominated and made it into the Independent on Sunday’s ‘Happy List’ for her contribution to her community. But her favourite volunteering role by far has been being part of the Love the Farm Stewarding team at Glastonbury Festival for 4 years running. In 2021 she became certified as Carbon Literate by the Carbon Literacy Project and a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project attending the COP26 as a volunteer activist.

Outside of work and volunteering Sarah enjoys daydreaming, very long walks, camping and spending time with her friends and family.