Exploring the Barriers to Volunteering is a chance for volunteer-engaging organisations to come together and explore their options and potential for engaging with groups who are often excluded from meaningful volunteering experiences. The Chances4Volunteering Toolkit will officially be launched at the event and delegates will benefit from a brief introduction to the resource.

Workshops

Delegates will also be able to attend two of three workshops on the day, each covering a different set of barriers to volunteering:

• Mental Health (Mark Brown, Editor of OneinFour)
• Learning Difficulties (MENCAP)
• Hearing Loss or Impairment (RNID)

Each workshop will seek to explore the various challenges that potential volunteers might face and how these individual bricks add up to a formidable barrier. Each workshop will be run twice so delegates will be able to tackle the nature of barriers from more than one perspective thus allowing delegates to build an understanding that is fundamental to a productive approach to helping volunteers move beyond those barriers.

Bringing it all Together

The day will end with a group session seeking to tie together both previous experience and what delegates have learned on the day by outlining a framework for how organisations can move forward in initiating or improving their supported volunteering efforts.

Other Elements of the Day

Networking - Chances4Volunteering believes that shared experience is a valuable tool and delegates will be encouraged to get to learn more about each other on the day.
Lunch - is included in the day – please let us know (events@chances4volunteering.org) if you have any specific dietary requirements so that we may make the appropriate arrangements.
Being Public – we will be recording as much of the event as our resources allow using various (photos, videos, etc…) so please bring your happy face on the day! We will, of course, honour any request not to be included in this – just make yourself known to us in advance or on the day.

The Venue

Accessibility - Guildford YMCA is an accessible venue – their Access Statement can be found here. Please let us know if you would like us (events@chances4volunteering.org) to make any specific arrangements for access to help you get the most from the day.
Location & Parking – the venue is only a few minutes walk from Guildford Rail Station and there is a multi-story car park nearby. Please see here for more details.

Attending

This event is aimed at organisations who are thinking of starting a supported volunteering initiative or want to improve an existing project and we are particularly keen to see members of the Chances4Change Programme take part. An online registration form can be found here.

About Us

This workshop is being facilitated by the Supported Volunteering Toolkit Project based at Volunteer Centre Slough and will inform the development of the Toolkit. This work is funded by the Big Lottery Fund through the Chances4Change programme.

Read original blog post

Having attended this event, it raised many areas of thought. The most important thing that I took away was that, actually, running a supported volunteering project is not alot different from running any really well managed and supported project that involves volunteers.