For our latest ‘meet the team’, we caught up with our new Community Engagement Officer, Omer, to find out about his upcoming outreach and partnership work within the local community.
Omer is available to attend pop-up events and outreaches in and around Bury to assist clients with any issues. He will assess a client’s need and provide information and signposting or arrange for one of our team specialists to contact them directly.
What made you want to come and work for Citizens Advice?
I’ve always worked around people and naturally enjoy helping people. I have previously worked in sales, IT and most recently with the Jobcentre, and the latter was where I really found my calling for helping people. I started looking for a role that involved helping my community and came across Citizens Advice. I haven’t looked back since.
What sort of things does your role involve on a day to day basis?
I joined CABB in October, so I’m still finding my feet a bit. Recently I’ve been attending events in the community to meet with the public, other charities and local councillors to raise awareness of the Citizens Advice service and discuss how we can work together to help people. It’s important for us to be involved with the community locally so that when people need help they know that we’re here and that they can come to us for advice.
Why is it important for CABB to be so involved in the community?
By going out to these places and meeting people you get a real understanding of the community and their specific issues – you wouldn’t get the same relationship without community engagement work.
It gives you a real idea of what issues people are facing locally and what support they might need. I’m already speaking with our asian, elderly and jewish communities and we want to get out and reach as many people as we can.
What are you most excited to work on as part of your role?
Citizens Advice is a well recognised ‘brand’ and our services across Bury & Bolton are well known. One of the things I’m very keen to work on is continuing to develop and build on a resource linking up CABB and our other local charities, so that we can signpost clients effectively to the support they need.
We want to encourage collaboration between services locally and eventually have a network in place, so that people can easily access the support that’s right for their situation.
There is so much support available across the community, but the cost of living pressures are making things much tougher, so we’ve all got to work together – I’m looking forward to playing a part in this.
What have you enjoyed most since you started working at CABB?
The people who work here at Citizens Advice are brilliant. All of my colleagues are fantastic, some of them are volunteers who give up a lot of time every week to help people and I think it takes someone really special to do that. I feel like my opinion is valued here and I have a voice and that’s a wonderful feeling.
If you would like Omer to attend one of your planned community sessions as a one-off or set up regular outreach within your areas, please get in touch with us via the contact details at the end of the newsletter.