‘It is not only possible for one human being to make a real and lasting difference to another, it is often the only thing that ever does’. ‘Side by Side’, Council on Social Action, 2008 In this continuation of our series of posts highlighting the resources available from the Mentoring & Befriending Foundation (MBF) we look at the Transforming Lives report from late 2009 which starts off with the quote above before moving on to review the evidence for the impact of mentoring & befriending [...]

The Dissemination Manual for the National Peer Mentoring Pilot was published by MBF for the benefit of mainstream secondary schools in line with the Every Child Matters agenda. It breaks down a collection of case studies gathered from the national pilot programme for peer mentoring in schools and highlights the best practice and learning found there.

Though we don’t always submit regular blog posts to the site we do share a lot of information via the SV in the News page here on the site. That’s where you can find links to various bits of relevant news from across the UK. We do this by monitoring online mentions of  volunteering + any reference to a marginalised group such as disabled people, those with learning difficulties, refugees & the newly arrived or ex-offenders and them provide a link to the original story [...]

This is another clip from the Volunteer Films project on the Community Channel. I realise that this is a somewhat sheltered situation in that it brings together two organisations – MPEC and Mencap – who each have their own mission to support disabled people but it seems such a simple yet productive idea. If you have not heard of this project yet then please let us introduce Middleton Park Equestrian Centre a few of their volunteers. Things to listen for: talk of finding volunteer opportunities for young people [...]

When we first conceived of this project one of the groups we wondered about was young people. Are they, in terms of common barriers to volunteering, a practical segmentation of our local communities or is the label or youth just too broad to work with? We will be exploring this question early in the New Year with Tim Davies’ peronal blog. Tim Davies of the organisation <em>Practical Participation. In the meantime, here is a video posted on youtube by Volunteering England earlier this year where [...]