Hurrah for Volunteers!

30th May 2023

VOLUNTEERS WEEK LOGO

We love National Volunteers Week! It's great finding out about what volunteers are up to - and it's lovely to take the opportunity to celebrate their role.

It's also good to see how much volunteering means to them and how rewarding it is - not a duty but a real joy.

Celebrating Digital Champions

To celebrate all the wonderful Volunteer Digital Champions, we asked Project Managers on the Digital Champions Network to nominate a Digital Champion and give us some examples of the support they'd been giving.

We heard so many heartwarming stories - such a breadth of work across diverse communities: from supporting groups where English isn't their first language to helping mums with young kids who need extra support; to people-centred health and well-being sessions, online health access support and regular library drop-ins. We'll be sharing more examples of their work in the coming months.

Nominations came from our friends at Peter Bedford Housing Association, Citizen Online, Community Fibre, Communities Together East Anglia, North Manchester Community Partnership, Digital Kent, Lincs Digital, Skills Enterprise, Northfield Community Partnership, Communities 1^st and Southampton City Libraries.

All Digital Champions deserve praise. Everyone nominated received a certificate and a big thank you! And we are pleased to announce our 4 winners......

Shafina Ali, from Skills Enterprise
Ann Saunders from Northfield Community Partnership
Lisa Cohen from Communities 1st
Tim Crompton from Southampton City Libraries

Well-done everyone! Keep up your brilliant volunteering

3 people smiling — *Ann, one of our celebrated Digital Champions (on the right) with Stan and Cheryl from the Digital Literacy Project organised by Digital NNS, Northfield Community Project. Photo by Ian Cuthbert*

Photo Competition

We had some lovely entries to our photo competition. Lots this year from our employee volunteers, many of whom have come volunteering through Inspire, and then gone on to the Digital Champions Network. Thanks for photos - we loved seeing them - and prizes are on the way to winners.

collage of pics

Inspiring Employee Volunteers

And Emma had a great day at a Virgin Media O2 Business training session, seeing how they are presenting using Inspire to get their employees volunteering and helping with digital skills.

group of employee volunteers