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

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Project	Description
Poole CVS / Poole Volunteer Centre	Helping to involve older people in volunteering by overcoming barriers

Poole CVS aims to support the sustainable development of the Poole voluntary/community sector by, for example, providing support to individual organisations with fundraising and organisational development.

The Volunteer Centre is a project of the CVS and runs the Older People’s Volunteer Project. The aim of the project is to involve more older people in Poole in volunteering, especially those who may face barriers to volunteering.

The Older People’s Volunteer Co-ordinator works closely with a team of six Ambassadors, ranging from 60-88 years of age, who were recruited to help promote volunteering to older people. The approach (peer recruitment) has been the real success story of the project so far. Using older people to recruit older people has cut through a lot of the automatic reaction of “I’m too old to volunteer”, thereby turning ‘deniers’ into volunteers. It has also been very beneficial for the Ambassadors who are admired for what they are doing.

The Volunteer Centre works closely with other organisations in the voluntary sector in terms of promoting best practice around volunteering. In April 2006 they held a conference themed ‘The Older Volunteer’ which was aimed at helping organisations and their practice in recruitment, retaining and retiring older volunteers. This conference was attended by 30 organisations from across Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole, and key workshops were run by CSV and REACH.

The Ambassadors were also videoed to include their thoughts, feelings and experiences of volunteering which was shown at the conference to inspire the organisations to take into consideration when involving older people in volunteering.

One very successful activity within the project has been the ‘Senior Snippers’ project. The aim of the project was to fill the need for suitable volunteering placements for isolated, housebound older people. Now the skills of up to 11 volunteers can be used in this cutting service, which involves volunteers cutting out information of interest to local charities from health magazines and newspapers. The charities can then feed back this information to their service users.

Using the Volunteering England toolkit, the project evaluated their services through an in-depth survey of their volunteers. The results were confidential and were analysed by another voluntary organisation on their behalf. Appropriate actions could then be taken to rectify any problems, which were identified and build upon any successes outlined.

The CVS also produces a quarterly newsletter publishing advice and news, with a readership of approximately 300 amongst CVS members and organisations looking for volunteers. 169 volunteer-involving organisations have been kept up to date with the V.I.P (Volunteering in Poole) supplement and also using an email alert system.

Over the next year, the Older Peoples project aims to widen the current area to include Bournemouth and focus on recruiting from all sectors of the community including BME, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ex-Offenders, and to continue to spread best practice around volunteering both locally, regionally and nationally where the opportunity arises.

A planned schedule of networking meetings, coordinators groups, a further conference and information sharing days are planned up until March 2008.

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