Vision for Volunteering: Our members share their stories

Two months ago, we launched the Vision for Volunteering, a collaborative project that sets out how we want the volunteering landscape to develop over the next decade. It has been incredible to see how local voluntary and community organisations have engaged with the Vision, including our amazing NAVCA members. We heard from CVS Tendring about how they have engaged with the Vision.

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At CVS Tendring, they believe volunteering is everyone’s business - for staff and trustees, for the diverse communities they work with, for local voluntary and community organisations, as well as local employers.

After the pandemic, with nearly all volunteering efforts directed towards immediate support for vulnerable communities and the important task of making vaccinations available, CVS Tendring used the opportunity to think about they do, how they do it and, perhaps most importantly - why they do it.

They started from the premise that volunteering is for everyone. They asked themselves, 'how can we encourage and enable a more diverse section of people in our communities to volunteer, and how can we work with local organisations and employers to help them provide excellent volunteering opportunities and support them to be excellent volunteer hosts?'.

CVS Tendring recognised that some people will find it harder to get into volunteering – perhaps they think it “isn’t for people like me.” Perhaps they cannot see the value of doing something for nothing, or perhaps they feel they just do not have the time.  

Now, volunteering is embedded within all CVS Tendring's staff appraisals, highlighting the importance of fully integrating volunteers within the organisation, and progress on this is reported regularly to the Board of Trustees. Inductions for new staff are focused on the question, 'How can we build a better, more effective, more inclusive volunteering offer?'. One example of this is CVS Tendring's targeted work with young people aged 16-18. They challenged themselves to think beyond traditional avenues into volunteering, and are in the process of co-producing a youth action model with young people.

CVS Tendring said, ''We want to drive our communities' skills into local voluntary and community activities and organisations by promoting volunteering as an opportunity. Not only does volunteering share knowledge and experience but it also shares gifts and skills, which is both beneficial to the local community and helps to decrease stress and improve wellbeing too – for employers, volunteering by your employees has been proven to increase productivity and creativity and reduce sickness.''

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In thinking more about developing their volunteering offer, CVS Tendring used the Vision for Volunteering to inspire a commitment to developing volunteering in their local area. They looked at the five key themes of the Vision and used them to write a commitment to submit on the Vision website.

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Some of their commitments included:

- leading, supporting and developing voluntary action, and empowering local people.

- celebrating the valued and important role that volunteers and volunteering has within local organisations and our local communities.

- actively engaging with those in our community that may not have access to opportunities due to inequalities and power imbalances in our society.

As a partner in the Vision for Volunteering, it is great for NAVCA to see how our members are using the Vision to develop their own amazing work.

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Share your story

If you're a NAVCA member who has engaged with the Vision for Volunteering, we want to hear from you! If you'd like to share your story, get in touch with us at comms@navca.org.uk.