GoldStar - Snapshot Age Concern - Promoting good practice in managing volunteers from socially excluded groups

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GoldStar - Promoting good practice in managing volunteers from socially excluded groups

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Project	Description
Envision	Helping young people (16-19) to ‘make a difference’ through volunteering

Envision aims to enable young people to realise their capacity to "make a difference" by providing them with inspiring, relevant and properly supported volunteering opportunities. Through their programmes, Envision aim to help young people learn new skills, build their confidence and self-esteem and grow more aware about pressing social and environmental issues. Envision also aim to enable young people to grow in responsibility and build respect for the environment and other people.

The core programme enables young people aged 16-19 in schools and colleges to set up and run their own voluntary projects around social and environmental issues that they feel passionate about.

Envision seeks to engage young people in the programme through fun, interactive presentations in schools and through peer to peer approaches. Whilst the programme is open to all young people, the project aims to engage young people from BME groups and particularly young people who do not usually volunteer. This is done by targeting schools in inner city areas of London with large BME communities and by using innovative recruitment techniques, including video-based engagement materials. The fact that the programme is youth-led allows young people to take ownership of their projects and tackle issues that are relevant to them, whatever their cultural background.

Support is provided to the young people particularly through adult volunteers who are trained and placed in pairs with the young person teams. These volunteers provide advice and encouragement to the young people as they carry out their activities at weekly meetings. Adult volunteers receive training on youth-led facilitation and support from Envision over the year via a named Project Coordinator, networking and top up training events.

With support from Envision and the adult volunteers, the young people build their team, identify issues to address, plan and frame their ideas and then reflect on their learning. Envision place a lot of emphasis on recognising the achievements of volunteers. Young people have their own web page where they can learn about social and environmental issues. This web page is also a place for sharing ideas and to record and celebrate their activities and achievements. The young people’s achievements are celebrated at an annual end of year event in July. The whole volunteering experience has been reported as an enjoyable one for both students and adult volunteers.

Volunteers are supported in a number of ways, including through the establishment and maintenance of an effective network of adult volunteers. This is achieved through networking events and termly events where adult volunteers have a structured opportunity to feed into the development of the programme. The adult volunteers network is also maintained by a monthly email bulletin and top-up training events, as well as having a named contact at Envision who checks in with them by phone or email, at least every fortnight.

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