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:
7 comments on “Reimagining volunteering in a connected world: a process for developing creative new volunteering ‘products’”
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I think any group aimed at young volunteers needs a website - my local vinvolved team doesn’t have one. I think this is pretty atrocious.
As a keen gardener I like the idea of the Guerilla Gardening thing in theory, but my problem with it is perfectly summed up in the pic at the top of the page: THEY ARE PLANTING MARIGOLDS UNDER A GREAT BIG TREE.
Hey Kathy
I think the thing is with vinvolved teams and other organisations working with volunteers is that the amount of resource they have available to do stuff online really varies. After all, the people in the teams specialise in working with young volunteers - that’s the main thing we need them to be good at.
We’ve been thinking about how we can help support organisations who don’t have their own websites, and we’re experimenting with this on the new vinspired. We obviously now have the project and organisation pages, and we’re in the process of making sure that all vinvolved teams have their own pages on vinspired which they can edit themselves. We know that teams don’t have loads of time to spend on admin, so we’ve tried to make it easy for them to link into Facebook fan pages and Twitter, if they use them, so they don’t have to duplicate work.
It’s just the beginning but already some of the teams are getting to grips with the new system, like this one:
http://vinspired.com/organisations/28-vinvolved-team-suffolk
So hopefully this should mean that every team has some presence online without having to spend any money or much time doing it.
As for planting marigolds, I wouldn’t have a clue, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you know the best places to plant them!
Hannah x
I would like to do some volentary work because I want to build up my confidence and gain experience.
I like the idea of helping out others because it’s a good thing to do.
That’s great. Lots of the volunteers we talk to say they build up confidence through volunteering.
If you’re based in England, and aged 16-25, you can search for opportunities and find out how to contact your local vinvolved team of youth volunteering experts who can help you find somewhere to volunteer by searching by your postcode here:
http://vinspired.com/
Good luck with it!
Hannah x
Any volunteering organisation needs to let people know it exists, so a website is a very good way of achieving this. And if the staff don’t have time to do it I imagine every group would have volunteers capable of helping out - absolutely loads of young people want to get into web design or similar jobs and need this sort of thing to put in their portfolios, etc.
Small groups in particular don’t really need a paid-for website, just something like a blog or Facebook page would be fine for most of them. Both/either of those should be able to give people enough information and provide a way of communicating with people.
Then there’s other free stuff like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other photo album sites which could be useful as well for some groups.
I can’t use the v site since it changed btw, it just always freezes on me and closes the tab. Don’t know what’s up with it, & don’t think it is happening to other people, maybe it’s just because my computer is old. But I’m pretty stuck at the moment.
Is there any other way I can find out about upcoming stuff?
Sorry to hear that Kathy. What browser are you using? I’d hate to think you were missing out! Could you drop me a line at info@vinspired.com with as much detail as possible. Thanks x