Corporate Volunteering

All of our amazing volunteers have skills and qualities that they bring to their organisations. In volunteering, some people want to learn new skills, and perhaps do something totally different from their 'day job'; whilst many people love to use their existing skills to help out. People who offer their specialist skills often say it's because they want to give back or 'pass it forward' to others, or it may be simply because it’s something they love doing. As well as individuals offering their time, increasingly, we see employers with policies encouraging staff to take time out for volunteering. Sometimes they want to complete a one-off project as a feel-good team building exercise. This can be a fantastic offer for organisations who are able to take advantage of an occasional group of volunteers, though even more beneficial are the employee volunteering policies which give employees more freedom and flexibility to find their own volunteer role to match their personal passion and actively deploy their skills within a local charity or community setting. Maybe you could be an amazing social media volunteer, getting creative with Canva? Perhaps you have good IT skills and get a buzz from passing on your knowledge to the more digitally challenged? Love driving? Perhaps you’d enjoy joining the team of volunteers who support Community Transport schemes across the country, enabling vulnerable people to more easily got to and from important medical appointments. There are so many different opportunities to deploy your skills and experience through volunteering. At GoVolHerts team, we've seen the benefit ourselves, being lucky enough to have wonderful skilled volunteers to help for example with our administration and with photography at our events, capturing moments from our annual Volunteer Fair and Trustees' Conference. Have a skill that you’d like to use in your volunteering? Here are our tips: Get smart-searching our database! Try putting different search terms related to your skill into the first blank field of our volunteer opportunity search here . Select appropriate filters in the Cause and Activities tags. You can fine-tune the activity by clicking the little pink arrow at the right. Experiment with different combinations to help you find a great opportunity. Offer your skills up to organisations on GoVolHerts, by adding yourself to our Volunteer Pool. Complete your profile and being in the pool allows organisations to contact you directly if they think what you have to offer might be a great fit. Find out more about joining the GoVolHerts Volunteer Pool here . And it's not just about what you're giving; volunteering can also be a great way for you to further develop your own skills. For instance, whilst charities literally couldn’t run without the skills of the fantastic volunteers who make up their Board of Trustees, research shows that 57% of trustees under the age of 30 said that the role supported their career development. What a win-win situation! There are hundreds of opportunities on GoVolHerts from hundreds of local charities and non-profits groups. Everyone is different and we believe that there is a volunteering role out there for everyone, whatever skills you offer. Here are just a few examples: Driving Advice Legal & Financial Gardening Counselling Cooking

This International Day of Older People (on October 1st), "W e are celebrating the people, places and services that help us to stay active and connected in our community - whilst shining a light on the barriers that can make them harder to access" say the Centre for Aging Better. "Older people make huge contributions to our communities as workers, volunteers and carers. But when what’s on our doorstep is limited, these contributions can be harder to make. This IDOP we want to celebrate those contributions while helping to highlight, and ultimately tackle, any barriers that stops older people exploring what's on their doorstep." Hertfordshire is blessed to be an age friendly place with a great initiative to support older people to keep active and make the most of life - Age Friendly : Live Better . The team have been looking into what keeps people active and what can stop them from participating in things like volunteering. Charlotte Bird, Age Friendly: Live Better Programme Lead said: "At Age Friendly: Live Better we are lucky to have many Live Longer Better Champions and Age Friendly Ambassadors volunteer with us and have seen first-hand how volunteering helps older adults stay active, connected, and engaged in their communities, improving wellbeing and reducing loneliness. And, of course, older adults have so much to give to their local communities in terms of skills, knowledge, and experience. It is vital that we all work together to remove barriers to volunteering to create a more inclusive, age-friendly environment." Dave Bartlett is a Live Longer Better champion with the organisation. Dave tells us he gets great satisfaction through his volunteering. He shared with us what makes his involvement so worthwhile: " I love meeting people and helping to make a real difference, whether to individuals or groups of individuals. Promoting Live Longer Better at events I can help people find activities that they would like to have a go at. At some I can use my badminton coaching qualification to help them start, improve their game, or even start new group sessions. When they look happy, I feel happy." People in later life have a huge diversity of life experiences that they can bring to what they do, as well as skills gained over the years, that can make them especially good volunteers. If retired, they may also have time available and an eagerness to get involved - whether it's in something new, so that they keep learning, or to use their existing skills and give something back. National statistics demonstrate that people aged 65 plus are more likely to volunteer formally or informally than the average. Let's be thankful for how they are actively empowering our local charities to do their important work in the community.

Volunteering is a great way to contribute to a cause that is close to your heart; it's also a way to explore new opportunities you might not have thought of. Below we hear from Samuel Fagar, a volunteer at Bright Futures UK , a charity supporting children and young people who have had to take time out of education due to serious and long-term illness. Volunteers offer their support to those aged 5-24 through befriending, mentoring, tutoring and workshops. Despite having not wanted to get into education - and claims he still doesn't! - Samuel shares how volunteering has been an important part of his life and why working at Bright Futures has changed his perspective... 1. How did I get into volunteering? My first experience of volunteering was in 2019. At the ripe age of 14, I was eager to do my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award and within that, I started volunteering at Monkton Nature Reserve in Kent. Once finishing my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award, I continued to volunteer at Monkton Nature Reserve until 2020 – that pesky Covid-19 always finds a way into people’s stories! Once the pandemic and lockdowns were over, during the summer of 2021, I decided to go back to volunteering at Ramsgate Tunnels. Whilst I enjoyed it, I would end up shelving my volunteering experiences in late August of that year as I was to start my A-Levels! A couple of months afterwards, however, despite doing my studies and securing a part time job at Ask Italian in Westwood Cross, Thanet, I would re-enter volunteering, but in a different capacity. As someone who was deeply fascinated in history and politics, I become a Kent Youth County Councillor, Secretary to my Sixth Form’s Eco-Committee, a member of the British Youth Council (alongside the UK Youth Parliament scheme as a Deputy Member) and an Ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust. From then, at the age of 16, my volunteering opportunities proliferated. Before starting university, I had volunteering experiences around a variety of things, from leading public speaking workshops, chairing meetings and working with Kent police as a Youth councillor, helping form the Thanet Youth Council and even organising my first event as Regional Ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust. After joining university, eager to carry on my volunteering experiences, I would join other organisations such as the WWF, Bright Futures UK, the mentoring organisation, Business Education and Events (BEE) Network, Herts Young Homeless, Shoutout UK, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and even going to Calais to help volunteer with refugees. At the age of 21, I look back on a strong history of volunteering with happiness and excitement, but at the heart of all of the things that I have done, I can trace it to my early days of 14 when I started my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award. 2. What attracted me to this role? I had always found teaching fun and exciting. Although I never wanted to be a teacher, nor do I still want to now, I still thoroughly enjoyed sharing knowledge with people. When I started at the University of Hertfordshire as young fresher, there was a part time careers fair ran by the university’s careers team and among the members of staff, was Bright Futures UK. As I was eager to know what each stand was offering, I went over. In this discussion, I learnt I could make a real difference in someone’s life just by simply talking to them about Geography! I was really eager to join, but as a first-year student, adjusting to university at first was quite difficult. It wouldn’t be until mid-way through the year, after learning the ropes, I realised I had time and the ability to start doing online tutoring. From then on, I began to email Bright Futures UK and they told me they were holding an online information session about the charity and what I could do as a tutor – I was hooked straight away. As someone who passionately believe in the power of education, I knew I needed to do something and from then on, I would join. 3. What do you enjoy about it? Honestly, I love everything about it! The young people you get to meet are incredible. Despite the things they have gone through, they are beyond inspiring. They constantly ask questions, they make you think and adapt and it is a wholly amazing experience. The thing I enjoy most however, is the connection you make with the young people and watching them grow. They begin to open up to you and they bring you into this exciting world of their own and it is terrific to be a part of. As they let you in, you help them with more than just the education side. You help them develop as young person and it is honestly an incredible thing to be a part of! 4. What has it brought you? It has brought me to understand the value of connecting with young people and believing in them. People can often dismiss students because of the ‘low’ grade they got and in reality, it is more than they just didn’t revise or don’t care. Bright Futures UK is a great way to bring young people back into education and I think being a part of that has be the most rewarding thing that I can think of. 5. What would you say to someone who is thinking about volunteering? At the risk of sounding like a Nike advert, ‘Just do it!’. It is an incredibly rewarding experience. You develop so much and you really begin to learn a lot about yourself. It is amazing the things that you end up doing, it pushes you so much and the impacts that you end up doing are incredible. You get to meet amazing people, whether fellow volunteers or staff, along the way and honestly it just makes the experience even better. I can never describe, nor put it into the words the feelings you can get or why you should do volunteering – I think partially that is because I change my answer every time someone asks me why should I volunteer. But the one thing that never changes no matter who the person that's asks me, the first three words that come out my mouth are ‘just do it!’.