Opening doors to volunteering

EYV11 – ‘Opening the door to volunteering to underrepresented groups’ This programme was funded by the Cabinet Office as part of the European Year of Volunteering 2011.

This programme was designed to:

create an enabling environment for inclusive volunteering
produce a dynamic resource of guidance, empowering volunteer involving organisations to fully engage with their communities in voluntary activities
raise awareness about the value and importance of inclusive volunteering
provide a legacy of an active inclusive volunteering community

This involved a mapping of current research and good practice in engaging with volunteers who are traditionally less likely to volunteer. This review explored research and good practice guides produced to date, but also incorporated action learning networks to identify current developments and pioneering practices; this involved both face-to-face and on-line discussions.

Face-to-face discussions were facilitated via 27 action learning workshops on topics related to inclusive volunteering in different English regions. These were advertised widely and took place between September and November 2011. On-line discussions were facilitated on the Attend Connect forum, and a number of case studies were developed as a result, which identified how current practitioners progressing their own inclusive volunteering initiatives. NB This forum has been built using the same social networking platform as ‘i-volunteer’, and has the capacity to facilitate significant sharing of learning.

In addition, Attend reviewed and presented small-scale projects with volunteering organisations, in order to identify and celebrate the enabling factors that underpin an inclusive volunteering environment.