Thursday 1 April 2010

Quality Time: Sheffield Volunteering Publicity Goes Live!


1st April 2010 marks the start of a year-long publicity campaign aimed at encouraging more Sheffielders to get involved in volunteering. Residents of the Steel City are being urged to ‘Spend Your Quality Time... Volunteering’.

A different benefit of volunteering will be highlighted in each month, with April highlighting how people can ‘Spend Your Quality Time... Changing Your Life’.  Future months will show how people can 'Spend Your Quality Time... Gaining New Skills... Making Friends... and even... Saving the Planet'!  We are encouraging people to visit a new blog, http://www.sheffieldqualitytime.wordpress.com/ to find out how they could change other people's lives and also their own, perhaps becoming a little happier, healthier, more employable, or wordlier through volunteering.  As well as highlighting a new benefit each month, visitors will be able to follow links directly to volunteer-involving organisations in Sheffield who are particularly relevant to that month's theme, and read volunteers' first-hand accounts of how they themselves have experienced the benefits being highlighted.  The blog is linked to a new Twitter account, which the currently-forming Volunteering Ambassadors Team will be able to update - if you're on Twitter, follow it at @QualityTime247.  If you're not - sign up and start today!

The start of this campaign coincides with the launch of the new Sheffield Volunteer Centre website http://www.sheffieldvolunteercentre.org.uk/.  The lovely new site is clearly divided into three sections, for people who want to volunteer, organisations who involve volunteers, and organisations who want to support their staff to volunteer.  In my opinion it fulfills the original brief of being exciting and engaging, so hopefully will be a real inspiration for people making their first foray into finding out about volunteering here!  In addition there are great resources for volunteer managers, including an online notice board for people with an interest in volunteering to network, share resources and developments in volunteering.  Make sure you take a look, and if you're based in Sheffield why not become a member too?!


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