Frontline volunteers across Dundee’s community food projects regularly support people living with:

• Food insecurity

• Mental health crises

• Debt and financial hardship

• Trauma and distress

• Social isolation

Many volunteers are themselves members of the local community, often facing similar financial pressures and emotional strain.

Hearing difficult stories, witnessing crisis and carrying concern for those they support can lead to:

• Emotional exhaustion

• Stress and anxiety

• Burnout

• Vicarious trauma

Without intervention, this strain risked diminishing volunteers’ wellbeing and ultimately reducing the availability and quality of vital community-based services.

The workshops aimed to provide:

• Space for volunteers to reflect on their own wellbeing

• Tools for self-care and emotional regulation

• Strategies to identify and mitigate vicarious trauma

• Resources to sustain long-term resilience

• A supportive environment to connect with peers

Two in-person workshops were delivered for 80 volunteers and frontline staff across:

• 20 Community Food Network projects

• 15 additional local charities and support groups

The sessions covered:

• Understanding vicarious trauma

• The role of empathy

• Risk factors and warning signs

• Trauma and the autonomic nervous system

• Barriers to self-care

• Evidence-based resilience and wellbeing practices

Each participant received worksheets, self-monitoring tools, printed and digital resources, and practical guides to embed learning beyond the workshop.

The sessions were adapted based on accessibility feedback—resulting in improvements such as dyslexia-friendly materials, coloured overlays, and clearer formatting for future training.

Stronger wellbeing and resilience

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Participants reported:

• Feeling more equipped to manage emotional strain

• Improved ability to identify signs of vicarious trauma

• Greater understanding of their own needs

• Increased confidence in communicating stress to peers and managers

• A sense of permission to prioritise self-care

Improved team culture

Volunteers shared tools with their teams, leading to positive cultural shifts.
At Menzieshill Community Larder, volunteers introduced:

• Post-session decompression time

• Space to share difficult interactions

• Practical use of workshop tools in daily practice

A volunteer described the change:

“I feel like it gave me permission to look after myself. I’m still very empathetic, but not to the point where it harms my own mental health.”

Sustained community support

Had the project not taken place, many volunteers expressed they were approaching burnout and would have struggled to continue supporting local people.

Instead, the workshops:

• Improved volunteer retention

• Strengthened the resilience of community-led services

• Supported more dignified, kind, and sustainable community food provision

• Enabled organisations to plan further wellbeing discussions and training internally

Ongoing engagement

• 35 participants asked to remain connected with workshop providers

• Further tools and a new “Handbook for Looking After Yourself” have now been developed

• Continued interest in follow-up sessions and workplace-specific training