| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 29.06.2006 | Goldstar Regional Conference (South East and London) |
| Number of Delegates | Location |
|---|---|
| 85 (click to view list) | Goodenough College London |
| Format |
|---|
| 1. Interviews with GoldStar Exemplar project managers 2. Workshops relating to recruitment and selection and progression pathways |
A more detailed outline of some of the issues arising as part of the event is also available on this website.
Three GoldStar project managers/workers provided a number of insights into how volunteers are recruited and supported:
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Gracia McGrath of Chance UK, which is a project that identifies primary school children with behavioural difficulties who are at risk of developing anti-social or criminal offending behaviour in the future, and seeks to improve their lives by offering them one-to-one mentoring with a carefully screened, trained and supervised adult volunteer, and support and guidance to the children’s parents and/or carers
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Eleanor Coker from the Volunteer Centre Kensington and Chelsea. The Centre delivers a range of innovative and exciting volunteering services, including A+ Volunteering , which encourages and supports disabled people and people with mental and physical health needs to have a positive volunteering experience in their local community
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Suzy Messenger from 121 Youth Befriending, which is a charity set up in 1986 in the West Kent area to provide a mentoring/befriending scheme that aims to support young people from the ages of 6 to 21 who are classified as children at need and at risk. The GoldStar Project, 121 Zero Project, was started in 2001 to promote zero tolerance of discrimination towards vulnerable isolated groups such as refugees, travellers’ communities, black and ethnic minority groups, and those suffering from disability.
Two key themes were addressed as part of the event, these being recruitment and selection and looking after volunteers.
The following views expressed by participants at the event provide a flavour of some of the issues raised.
“If you are trying to engage hard to reach volunteers, transportation is a real issue, especially when you are working in rural communities, so you have to set up services around those communities, engaging with people from those communities”
“There are organisations that say, we work with vulnerable people, so we couldn’t have anyone with mental health problems…but there are lots of organisations that don’t say that and take a very different approach”
“Those three days of (induction) training, it is not just for us to look at them and see if they could be mentors. It is for them to say, can I actually do this, and that is really important”
One delegate described how a volunteer had been taken to the House of Commons and referred to it “as a castle”…”It was just gold for him”
A more detailed outline of some of the issues raised as part of the event is also available on this website. See full report
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