We are incredibly proud of our team of volunteers, all who continue “to brighten young lives and make good citizens” – between them they have contributed more than 600 years volunteering! Many of them are former members or live locally, and so know the area and community well. We have a group of young people aged 16 and 20 who have also graduated from club members to volunteer status!
In 2008 the group were awarded The North West Heritage Volunteers of the Year by Heritage Lottery Fund. In June 2016, the volunteer team at Salford Lads Club were awarded The Queens Award For Voluntary Service.
If you would like to volunteer to help the club activities or in any other capacity – working with young people, organising events or fundraising – please get in touch.
Meet our volunteers:
Archie and Eric
Archie Swift MBE (right) and Eric Salthouse (left) were each involved with the club for more than 60 years. Archie was awarded the ‘Salford Citizen of the Month’ in April 2004 for his lifetime work as a volunteer at the club. In 2006 Archie was awarded an MBE for his work with young people at Salford Lads Club. Eric was named as ‘My Hero’ by Manchester entrepreneur Dave Tynan in the June 2004 edition of Social Enterprise magazine.
The Cambrian News reported on the the friendship between Eric and Archie that started at camp in 1949. Eric had been a member of the club for two years and Archie was at his first camp. Archie remembered “Eric won a brand new pair of football socks which was a fantastic prize back then, but he gave them to me without giving it a second thought. I had nothing, none of us did, and I couldn’t believe he had given me his socks.”
Eric said that they had grown up together and stuck together. When they had outgrown camp the pair, wanting to give something back, worked in the camp’s cookhouse.
In April 2023, Archie Swift MBE passed away aged 88. He will be much missed and always remembered.