News & stories

Volunteers Week celebrated by charities in Wiltshire

June 2023

The theme of this year’s Volunteers’ Week, which lasts from June 1 to 7, is Celebrate and Inspire. Charities and groups will use it to highlight diversity in volunteering.

Volunteer and community development worker Sarah Pickering said: “Anyone can be involved in volunteering, and you can fit it around your lifestyle...you can make such a difference to the people in your community.”

The launch of Volunteers Week in Wiltshire has been reported by Wiltshire Times & TBC.

Time Well Spent

May 2023

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) has recently published the key findings from the 2023 “Time Well Spent” research focusing on volunteers and their experience.

Time Well Spent is NCVO’s research programme focusing on volunteers and their experience. The survey explores:

volunteer participation
motivations and barriers to volunteering
the quality of volunteers' experiences
the impact of volunteering.

"The data shows the impact of covid on volunteering has been profound. People who were lifelong volunteers broke their habit during the pandemic and haven’t yet got back to it. Given how important volunteering is to our social fabric - and how much people get out of it - we need an urgent focus on helping people find opportunities that suit them.

There are also positives with high levels of satisfaction among volunteers. This is a testament to the hard work of volunteer-involving organisations. Many have had to adapt their volunteering opportunities over the last few years to respond to social distancing measures as well as new need in communities."