Borders Talking Newspapers

Volunteering with BTN is  rewarding, you can learn to new skills, meet new people and, most importantly, have FUN!

As well as the routine roles below there are many other ways you could get involved such as committee work, fund raising and social events. We are a very friendly group of people and, most of all, being part of BTN is FUN!!!

We have about 80 volunteers but are always looking for new people to take on the various tasks.

We employ Wendy Moss who is our part time manager and also a volunteer but everyone else involved is unpaid.

Contact Wendy to find out more.

The routine tasks at our Duns base are:

Dealing with returns

We need at least one person each Friday morning to empty returned wallets

Editing

Every Thursday, teams of one or two people go through the Southern Reporter and Berwickshire News to select suitable articles. These are then edited down to a good length for reading.

Reading

A team of three readers meets on a Friday afternoon to read the articles.

Recording

One person records the newspaper on a Friday afternoon. This person also edits the recording, splits it into tracks and produces the masters. This task calls for a limited knowledge of computers and is really no harder than basic word processing.

Copying and dispatch

This is usually done on a Saturday morning. Sticks are copied then put into the wallets and taken to the Royal Mail Sorting Office.

Talking Hawick News

The roles here are similar but the whole local operation is carried out on a Friday morning in the Teviot Church in Hawick.

Carole dealing with the returned wallets

Editing the papers

Lorna and Mary in the studio

Tom at the controls

Wendy copying the sticks. We routinely send out around 150 sticks and they are copied in about 20 minutes