Community Champion volunteer scheme launched for Get Online Week 2021
Good Things Foundation launches a new volunteering scheme to help promote Get Online Week to community organisations right across the country. Volunteers will ensure that community partners have all the support they need to promote the campaign and run events.
At Good Things Foundation we have always recognised the crucial role that volunteers play in supporting the work of our community partners. Many organisations in the Online Centres Network are either 100% volunteer-led or rely heavily on volunteers to deliver services, including their digital inclusion activities.
During Volunteers week in June, we were proud to share volunteers’ stories that told of the personal sense of achievement and reward in being a volunteer, the amazing impact volunteering can have, and how, for so many volunteers, the act of volunteering shapes and develops their own skills too.
Over the years we’ve had many offers of support from people keen to help us, but we have not always been able to harness that goodwill as much as we would have liked (with the notable exception of our experienced and dedicated board of trustees). So we are very happy to be launching the first in the series of what we hope will be many different volunteering opportunities with us.
Taking place in October each year, Get Online Week brings people together at thousands of events across the country, celebrating digital inclusion and helping people to learn new digital skills. Our partners hold events that allow them to reach new audiences and raise awareness of digital inclusion in their local communities.
To make sure that as many of our partners as possible are aware of this year’s campaign, and the materials and resources that are available to them – we are setting up a small team of Community Champion Volunteers.
They will be spending time over the coming weeks talking to community organisations all across the country about the campaign. They will also be contacting people after the campaign week is over to see what events they held and what they got up to.
Learn more about becoming a Community Champion and what it involves, or let us know that you are interested in becoming one.
Hilary Nugent
Volunteer Manager
Hilary supports our community partners with all things volunteering. This includes working with our funding partners to ensure that employee volunteering adds real value to the work of organisations providing digital skills in local communities, by building and developing the sustainability and skills of those organisations themselves. She also develops training materials and resources for our community partners to use.