Archive for the ‘Volunteering resources’ Category
-
Big shame for big society - behind the scenes of the vschools website
This weekend, reports in the national press mentioned the vschools website being shelved in a “big blow to big society”, so I thought it would be useful to give an insight into what the vschools site is.
The vschools site already exists, has been tested with pupils and schools, and hundreds of schools are ready to sign up. It’s just been sitting on a development server, waiting for a decision for the Department for Education - and sadly, they have decided to scrap the Youth Community Action programme, of which vschools was a part.
Here’s the story so far…
Back in December last year, we were asked to look at how we could build on the success of vinspired.com and the vinspired awards to create a safe, secure and engaging volunteering platform for 14-16 year olds in every maintained school in England.
Luckily we had a solid platform to (literally) build on: vinspired.com, a social platform connecting volunteers aged 16-25 with voluntary organisations who need their help. Building on top of this platform meant:
a) younger volunteers could move their accounts to vinspired at age 16, taking with them a record of their volunteering history
b) voluntary organisations could offer opportunities to the younger audience without doubling up on work
c) making the most of functionality we already had, and importantly
d) we could actually deliver an awesome website in a very short timescale without cancelling Christmas. (Just.)
Creating private spaces for schools & students
Using rapid, Agile development, we extended the vinspired platform, and designed and built private “walled gardens” for schools. This would ensure that pupils could share their photos, comments and achievements with others in their school, without sharing personal details or plans with the wider internet community. Schools could publish their own opportunities, and keep a record of the achievements of pupils at their school in one, easy to use dashboard. Pupils could view opportunities within the school and others in their local communities, offered by approved providers recruited by the vschools advisers.
Image: Logged in view of a school's profile. Please note this is only example content on a test server and does not reflect any relationship with the school, or real volunteering opportunities.
Schools were also given public web pages, where they could showcase their achievements (without identifying individual pupils) and share best practice.
Awards for all
Next up, we extended the age range for vinspired awards, so that pupils could get recognition for their efforts. To do this, we integrated the awards system into both vinspired and vschools user profiles, making it easy for young people to record the skills they learned and the impact they had on their communities. Both sites benefited from this one piece of work.
Image: Early designs for the vinspired awards integration
The next challenge was to work out how to create accounts for hundreds of thousands of pupils without creating loads of admin for staff. Synchronising with existing databases proved controversial in terms of data ownership. Allowing unchecked registrations provoked security concerns, and worries about how the right pupils would end up in the right walled garden. We eventually settled on a token system – school staff could generate unique codes allowing pupils to sign up within a limited time-frame. Each code linked them to the correct school.
Image: vschools service map
Buy-in from pupils, teachers and local authorities
We had, given the time-scales, planned to conduct user testing on the live site, as we had complete control over who could access each secure area, and a team of vschools advisers with contacts in schools who were keen to get involved. However, we were then required to conduct user testing prior to launching the site, so I visited Salford and Milton Keynes to run user testing sessions with pupils and teachers. The feedback was hugely encouraging, helping us to spot bugs but also confirming that the site could work for young people, and I’m grateful to all those who helped with this process.
Since then, a team of over 90 vschools staff have been showing the test site to schools and local authorities, whilst waiting for the green light to launch the site. Figures to end of June (July’s figures come later this week) show 1278 interested schools, with over 500 ready to sign up. Anecdotal evidence from vschools advisers suggest many schools committed to the project prior to the end of term.
So, for now the vschools site remains left on the shelf, but I am hopeful that we may yet find a like minded sponsor to help us realise the potential and share the vision.
-
Reimagining volunteering in a connected world: a process for developing creative new volunteering ‘products’
In 2008 and Timebank v co-commissioned a piece of research to gain better understanding about the barriers to youth volunteering.With this new understanding, a toolkit was created for the volunteering sector to use and develop opportunities that were more relevant and enticing to young people.
The toolkit draws inspiration from “a new breed of social action brands”, emerging as a result of self-organising via The Internet. Homemade, authentic and innovative these organizations, initiatives and websites are creating new ways for people to give their time, take action and make a social difference.
Reimagining volunteering in a connected world: a process for developing creative new volunteering ‘products’ outlines how lessons from these new social action plans can help inspire innovation in the voluntary sector.
You can also view slides from a workshop based on this work on Slideshare:
-
Strong foundations for homeless young volunteers
This week Crisis released a report on engaging young homeless people in volunteering. The report captures good practice from Crisis experience of running a one year v funded programme providing volunteering opportunities for homeless young people. The report is an excellent example of the type of information we need to be widely available to enable us to get better at involving disadvantaged young people in volunteering.
As Angela Ellis Paine, Director for the Institute of Volunteering Research, spells out in her introduction to the report ‘rather than providing (more) ‘good’ practice advice and guidance in the traditional sense … the report tells it as it was or at least how it was for one organisation … in an honest and engaging way’.
As part of v’s 2009/10 research programme we will be looking at engaging disadvantage young people in volunteering with the aim of providing practical information to support organisations. A literature review will be a key part of this work, if you have relevant reports or documents please get in touch.
-
Everyone working together
Here at v, we’ve been asking ourselves how we can do more to harness the power of social media and give young volunteers the tools they need to do our marketing and organising for us. (After all, we know they’ll do a better job than us.)
At our recent Generation Digital Conference, William Owen, strategy director at our digital agency Made by Many, shared the things we’ve learned, from letting go of centralised control (easier said than done: “the social web is disruptive, but some members of the SMT are still resisting”) to using existing APIs and building our own.
The presentation also includes case studies from Amnesty UK’s Protect the Human site, and generated lots of interest at the conference, so I thought I’d share it here.
Vinspired: Everyone Working TogetherView more presentations from William Owen. -
Resources For All: SocialBrite
Looks like there are a number of people and organisations realising the value that social media can bring to the work of charities and non-profits. The latest is Social Brite, a ‘non-commercial learning and sharing hub that brings together top experts in social media, social causes and online philanthropy’. Their aim is share and learn from mutual experiences and improve the causes that each individual organisation is working for.
Their Sharing Center is literally like a treasure chest of information for non-profits - tips range from sources for free photos and videos, a directory of social media reports, a social media toolset (much like the one provided by We Are Media), and a list of cause organizations (a more general version of the list of UK-focussed youth volunteering organisations we have on our blog - and it seems to updated regularly because it includes Google’s All for Good that we blogged about recently).
Here at vLabs blog we’re really glad to see initiatives like these, and look forward to seeing the resources available to non-profits and charities grow quickly. It was just a few years ago when finding data of value would be like looking for a needle in a haystack for those in this industry. Those days are over by the looks of it!
-
The Digital Generation Project
Photo credit: Chris Walsh
The Digital Generation project is a useful new site for everyone who works with young people or is interested in seeing how they use technology. Supported by the John D. and Catherine. T MacArthur Foundation and started by Edutopia, the Digital Generation Project aims to document the stories of people from Generation Now, for whom YouTube, Facebook and MySpace are as familiar as letter-writing and long-distance trunk calls once were to the older generation. It will be useful for parents to learn about and track the kind of digital tools their kids are using, for teachers to understand and utilise these tools to change the classroom and to support students in their learning, and for researchers and other institutions working with young people to get an insight into their world.
The project is US-based, but of course the insights will be valuable no matter where you are. They are also on Twitter (@EdutopiaDG). I suggest you check out some of the resources on the site to begin with, especially those here on the ‘building digital media and learning’ site, and this digital youth research from the University of California at Berkeley.
-
Resource Document: Innovations in International Volunteering
I was interested to find out about Innovations for Civic Participation, an organisation that promotes the creation of opportunities for young people to engage with their communities. Based in the US, it encourages the creation of a network of organisations that are active and committed to the case of youth participation in civic activities. The ICP is involved in a range of programmes, details of which may be an interesting read for people involved in youth volunteering.
In 2008, V commissioned the ICP to conduct a study of 22 innovative youth volunteering programmes from around the world - the resulting document is a good read for anyone working in the sector.
-
Volunteer Trends: May 2009
Just a quick update: I wrote about the Volunteer Trends presentation created by Mickey Gomez of the Howard County Volunteer Centre a while ago. He’s now updated it with some more information. Here’s his May 2009 presentation. It has a lot of useful stats regarding the increasing use of social media around the world, and how volunteering organisations are, and can, tap into them to increase their reach.
Volunteer Trends & Online EngagementView more presentations from M. Gomez. -
Non-profits on Twitter
For those not in the know, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that seems to have taken the world, and especially the UK, by storm. In the year from February 2008-2009, it grew by 1382% and has been covered extensively by the British press, such as the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent and the Times.
Mashable, a leading blog that covers the latest in technology around the world, recently published a list of non-profits on Twitter. Lon. S. Cohen, Director of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Society of New York and the author of that particular post, started off with a list of 26 charities who are on Twitter, but that attracted over 70 comments and is well on its way to expansion! Many of these offer volunteering opportunities for young people and if you’re on Twitter and interested in the work of non-profits, it will be well worth your time to follow them.
Check the list out here.
-
A resource for mentors of young people : Energize
Volunteering isn’t always easy, especially when the reality is that young people who volunteer often come from very different backgrounds and may need a lot of support, which is often best given in the form of a mentor. Young people, especially, can turn out quite differently if they have a mentor who cares about them and gives them the right advice. Similar qualities are required for people who lead a group of young volunteers.
If you are a mentor for a young person or lead a group of volunteers, then Energize Inc lists a number of useful resources for you, ranging from books and articles to websites. Take a look.
Loading ...
Nice piece, yourself.
Comments