|
The Volunteer Centre Western Isles (VCWI) is a small local charity which
exists to actively encourage, support and promote volunteering. The organisation
was established as one of four pilots in rural Scotland in January 1995 and has
since then developed into a Western Isles-wide organisation with a total of
seven part-time staff and offices in Stornoway, Tarbert, Ness, Balivanich and
Castlebay. The organisation is managed by a committee of experienced community
leaders drawn from throughout the islands and is presently involved in work with
schools, community education, social work and a wide variety of local community
groups.
In the course of their work VCWI identified a need to broaden the range of
people volunteering and as part of this developed a project targeted directly at
increasing the involvement of young people in volunteering. To achieve this,
first of all, the Volunteer Centre staff recognised that they would have to
widen their knowledge of the capacity of local organisations and groups in
enabling young people to volunteer for them. In conjunction with this they need
to research the needs of young people in relation to volunteering in a local
setting. This will involve implementing the use of a new national volunteer
database, and upgrading all the information on groups held by the Volunteer
Centre. The objective of their project is to pro-actively engage with young
people and develop and on-going campaign to attract this under-represented group
into volunteering. It is anticipated that the young people’s input will lead to
new types of interactions and provide a degree of innovation in regard to
volunteering.
The project has attracted support from LEADER+ and Western Isles Enterprise
to assist in the development of their two-year pilot phase and will focus on the
direct targeting of young people through existing community organisations, the
promotion of volunteering through on-line technologies and developing capacity
within existing community groups who utilise volunteers to enable them to more
easily facilitate entry of young people.
Co-ordinator of the Volunteer Centre, Kirsty Macdonald stated: “We are
excited to have this opportunity to further our work with young people and to
encourage more involvement with voluntary activity. The development of our own
website and the use of the on-line volunteering facility provided by the
database is a significant step in making volunteering easier for everyone to
access.
The project displays new thinking in regard to young people and how their
skills and abilities can be utilised in the voluntary sector. It is also
innovative in that there is use of new technologies to assist in pro-actively
stimulating an interest in volunteering, and strives to develop community
capacity by bringing young people into community activity at the earliest
opportunity.
|
