I am based in Liverpool, working from home and in 125 schools and sixth form colleges in the North West region. I am one of a team of ten Volunteering Project Mangers (VPMs) who work on behalf of Worldwide Volunteering inspiring sixth-form students to get involved in all kinds of volunteering, anywhere - locally, around the UK and worldwide – and for any length of time.
A major part of the work of a VPM is visiting sixth-forms and giving presentations, running workshops and attending careers/HE fairs.
Presentations enable me to speak to hundreds of students at once, helping them to understand the range of opportunities available to them as well as the difference they can make to the world around them.
Hopefully, I will inspire the students to spring into action!Every talk is different and I have certainly learnt to expect the unexpected, after giving presentations in almost every college situation from farmyards to beauty salons!
Each VPM has their own individual presentation and we are encouraged to be creative, so we all use lots of case studies of volunteers and photographs. Making students laugh is often half the battle won!
A presentation slot can be anything from five minutes to an hour and this morning I am pleased to have a forty-minute slot. This gives me enough time to highlight the benefits of volunteering, talk through case studies and highlight some local, UK and international opportunities, by demonstrating our online database of over 1.5 million placements.
The audience, 60 Year 12 students, are initially very quiet with their arms folded, but my icebreaker game soon gets them talking.I encourage lots of interaction during the talk, starting with a simple guessing game where I show photographs and get the students to shout out who they think is a volunteer.
The key to WWV’s success with young people is that we don’t preach. Interaction really gets the students thinking about volunteering in their own terms which is really effective.
It is so rewarding to watch an initially reluctant audience, gradually become excited about volunteering during the course of my talk; watching arms that were initially folded, shoot up with some really interesting questions.
One student asks, “Can I really volunteer wherever I want?” and another asks, “Can I volunteer in a morgue?”Often students are too shy to ask questions in front of the group so I stay afterwards so that students can ask me personally. One asks, “Can we really go to Tenerife to volunteer with the dolphins?”
The job is sometimes simply helping students to realise that volunteering does not mean giving up loads and loads of time, it could just be an hour a week or a one-off event.
Students are often also excited to realise that they do not have to take a gap year or spend thousands of pounds to be able to volunteer abroad, as the WWV database offers such a wide range of different volunteering opportunities in almost every country. They begin at one week in length and suit every budget.Lots of students are especially excited to learn that they can get up to £300 from our bursary scheme towards any costs.
At the end of the talk I ask anyone who is interested in volunteering to put their name and email address down on my sign-up sheets. This talk has been a great success, 55 out of the 60 have signed up!
The teacher is clearly very pleased too. Before dashing off to teach her next class, she says, “Thank you so much Natalie for a wonderful, inspiring presentation, there is lots to think about there.I think everyone can definitely get involved with something locally at least, thank you for making so clear the wide range of opportunities available.”
As VPMs for Worldwide Volunteering, we all work from home when we’re not in schools, so after my presentation I head home.
The first thing I do then is email all of the students who have left me their email address at the presentation, to find out what sort of volunteering they would like to get involved with.
It is really important to me to contact students as soon as possible, to keep hold of the initial enthusiasm stimulated by my talk, and email makes it possible for us to get back to student requests almost instantly.
Student replies to my initial email vary immensely. A lot of students are looking for local volunteering that is particularly relevant to the degree or career they are looking to do, but some are just keen to give something back and to get the hours towards our UCAS recognised certificate.
Some students are really specific in their requests, such as Hayley, for example, who is asking to work with penguins. On the other hand, a lot of students are just inspired to help out where they’re needed, like Oliver, who asks, “Is there any local work I could do in charity shops?”
Some of today’s emails include a request for medicine opportunities in Bradford, charity shops in Ashton-under-Lyne, UK kids-camps, projects in Germany and Burnley summer holiday play-groups. I will research these and reply to them within two days.
Other emails today include a thank you from the RNLI for all the volunteers I sent to one of their events and a thank you email from a school I visited last week. All the positive feedback is another highlight of this job. I also have several emails from students letting me know that they have applied for various opportunities, which I’ve suggested and also a few who have had their placement confirmed, which is fantastic!
I maintain regular contact with students throughout the year, emailing them at least every month either with an event in their area which needs volunteers or a more general email asking them if they’d like more help from me.
Yesterday, I sent out details of a charity event which needs volunteers in Manchester, and already twelve students from the area have replied saying they’d like to help out. One of my tasks for the afternoon is to email them with application details.A one-off event is often a really good stepping stone into more regular volunteering for students and I’m always pleased with the level of interest in these events.
If ever I run out of follow up work to my presentations, there is always research to be done on upcoming events, local opportunities in various areas as well as local festivals and summer camps.
For our website, we are working on making links with schools to create some video clips of students, so we’re never short of something to do!I record all of the work I do in a weekly report, which I add to throughout the week, recording the details of each visit or meeting and of each volunteer, who has either applied for or started a placement.
The working day has to end somewhere, which can be tricky when you work from home, as there is always one more response to send out and lots of the students get in touch in the evening time.
As I am about to clock off for the day, I receive another response to a latest mail out: “I would like to apply for this volunteer job thing could you please right my name down and my friend! And could you help me find something I can do for pharmacy I would be ever so grateful thanks for your time. Plz get back to me. asap..”
I sit back down to get back to our budding volunteer “asap” and promise myself I’ll turn off the laptop after this!
