Introducing Voice for Volunteers - the National Conference for Volunteers
There are at least 20 million volunteers in Great Britain and all of us benefit from their work throughout our lives. Most volunteers’ experiences are fulfilling and positive but - as the recent Volunteer Rights Inquiry* has highlighted – volunteers can also feel that they lack a voice. Moreover, while conferences exist for those working in the voluntary sector, conferences for volunteers themselves tend to be organisation or sector-specific.
The first National Conference for Volunteers is being run by volunteers for volunteers across all sectors and is planned to take place in London on International Volunteers Day in December 2010. Based on the principles of the ‘unconference’, it is the first time in this country that volunteers will have the opportunity to meet together, debate issues and celebrate experiences that matter to them. It will provide a unique opportunity for Government, policy makers and organisations who involve volunteers to hear directly from the grass roots of the sector, from people not constrained by having to deliver agendas or tick boxes but who are dedicated to making a difference.
The day, which will conincide with the first anniversary of i-volunteer, will provide an opportunity to celebrate volunteers and what they do. The legacy from the day will include stronger networks of volunteers from a range of sectors, greater engagement and ownership by volunteers in the future of volunteering and the promotion of best practice.
The event is being planned for 150-200 attendees. The day will be free to those attending and help with travel costs will be offered to people living outside the capital.
Video or webcast content will be available on i-volunteer, who are one of the Event's sponsors, to those who cannot attend.
We would very much appreciate your input to make this happen and to help kick-start the creation of the vital missing link in the third sector – that of the volunteers themselves.
To help us plan this important event, which will be a first in the UK, we would really appreciate it if volunteers from accross the country took a few minutes to respond to some questions in our online survey.
The survey will only take a few minutes of your time to complete and to show our appreciation you can opt to enter a prize draw to win an iPod shuffle, courtesy of Red Foundation.
To access the survey please click here.
Please also feel free to pass the link on to your fellow volunteers - the more feedback we get at this stage the better we can plan an event that meets the needs and expectations of volunteers everywhere. http://www.surveymonkey.com/voiceforvolunteers
_*The Volunteer Rights Inquiry is being run by Volunteering England to examine the issues and potential solutions around the subject of volunteer rights. A report on its findings will be delivered at the National Conference for Volunteers.
We now have an open group for the conference
http://www.i-volunteer.org.uk/groups/voice-for-volunteers-national-conference-for-volun/
and a provisional date for a central London venue - Saturday 30th April 2011 dependent upon raising sponsorship etc - exciting times.....
Hi Alison - sorry this postings taken a while to get back to you - we are very busy organising things at the moment. For now yours and others feedback is very helpful via the survey and this website. Otherwise please keep an eye out on i-volunteer for further updates about the event. We will also keep you in mind if and when we need more help. Everyones interest at this stage is a very positive contribution - thanks very much for yours.
how do you get involved in this :) other then doing the survey :) xx
@JamieT - I'd love to launch one (as mentioned in http://www.news.software.coop/get-the-survey-monkey-off-your-back/878/ ) but as a temporary measure, Google Docs, LimeService and Doodle are all better than S+M.
I really wouldn't ask the Regional ICT Champions. I feel they hold back Third Sector IT Support, erecting barriers to entry (such as anti-commercial licensing of materials, which hinders their use by co-ops which aren't grant-funded) and giving out poor information about sustainable sector-produced solutions. http://www.news.software.coop/why-is-public-and-charity-money-paying-for-the-private-sectors-marketing/617/
I really think you'd be better off asking groups like BW to help. I asked the South-West regional champion (at COSMIC) for the recording COSMIC took of the NAVCA Taunton event. I was told it would be made available, but it never has been as far as I know. The NAVCA page for the event has been taken offline and I feel my co-op's relationship with COSMIC has deteriorated beyond the point of likely salvage for other reasons, so I gave up asking.
Yes thanks MJR - all very useful suggestions we are also getting good feedback on our survey.
Hi @MJR the event organisers are all from and based in London. I like the idea of webcasting from other locations and enabling people to take part in the event - we were initially just looking at broadcasting the event externally. I'm all for promoting UK services, I'm not aware of any other survey software that's as easy to use as the Moneky, please do suggest one. We'll also talk to the Regional ICT Champions about getting there help to set up regional webcasting into the event - thanks for the suggestion :o)
I know these things have to start somewhere, but why do they always start in London? Are there really no organising volunteers in the Midlands, or is it just that you don't know any because you're London-centred?
While I'm OK with occasional trips to the polluted cities, I've had other Somerset volunteers tell me they won't go to big city events. Probably not surprising: they choose to live in rural areas despite all the problems of continuing to do so, after all.
Could the event help places like @volunteercentresouthderbyshire to display keynotes as a webcast on a big screen as part of a local event, with questions and comments fed back to London through social media / this site?
Please ask the sector's own technology organisations like BristolWireless, FossBox and GoodGNUs to assist before you sell the event out to Microsoft, BT-Yahoo, Google or other private enterprises that try to further the Digital Divide. It's a shame that even the questionnaire is on the foreign inadequate-privacy, disability-discriminating Survey Monkey site.
@ollybenson, @jamiet Thank you for your responses. I think I had a bit of curmudgeon day yesterday.
I agree that a start has to be made somewhere and I do welcome the fact that there are volunteers making this event happen and I will pledge whatever support I can offer from here.
We certainly could do something similar ourselves and I will look into how we can do this. I'll talk to the Volunteer Centres Derbyshire network and see if either the network, or us as a Volunteer Centre could open up one of the events that we already hold for local volunteers to a wider area?
Its great that interest is growing in the conference. We hope that volunteers from throughout the country will be able to come/and or watch it via webcasting etc. We are working hard to make this a reality and are very pleased to have the support of i-volunteer. Our questionnaire will be available hopefully within the next few days from this site. I am one of the committee members for the conference - we look forward to further dialogue to help us shape the conference.
Hi @lifeexperience we will be setting up a group on i-volunteer soon so people that are interested in supporting and attending the event can get together to help with planning content, hope you'll get involved :o)