Every year Volunteers Week takes place in the first week of June and they follow a theme to promote awareness towards a specific area. The theme for 2023 is ‘Celebrate and Inspire’ and the aim is to highlight that our diversity is our strength. It aims to recognise the efforts from anyone who volunteers or contributes in any way. This weeklong celebration offers resources to those who wish to get involved, you can find out more here.
Volunteers’ week encourages people to do something different and challenge themselves whilst helping others. For 39 years this celebratory week has seen growth upon growth, it is a nationwide event which has activities running both in-person and online. The week also raises awareness about the benefits becoming a volunteer and the diverse volunteering roles that are available – many are unaware of exactly what they can do and where they can do it.
There’s an ever growing shift to having an online presence and during the week stories about volunteering are encouraged to be shared on social media to celebrate all the wonderful happenings.
Volunteer Now have released figures that are astonishing! ‘Around 282,000 formal volunteers carry out work with designated organisations plus around 470,000 informal volunteers.’ These statistics cover just Northern Ireland alone, it only opens up our minds to think what the figures must be across the UK!
Just to let you know, informal volunteering is less visible and includes a wider range of activities, i.e., unpaid help for someone who is not a relative such as getting an elderly neighbour’s shopping.
The charitable organisation NCVO who operates Volunteers Week have also stated that during 2020/21, 16.3m people volunteered through a group, club, or organisation; however, volunteering patterns changed substantially during the pandemic. Formal volunteering plunged by a fifth (20%) on 2019/20 levels while informal volunteering saw a small increase (2%) during the same period.
We want to continue to champion this week and everyone’s efforts here at Essay Writer. To make organising and planning easier, we’ve put together a suggested template to take off the pressure. You can use Essay Writer for so much more than just writing assignments! Try it now.
The NCVO (The National Council for Voluntary Organisations) who run the national volunteer’s week are encouraging people to share their stories and use the hashtag #VolunteersWeek to get your story out there. There’s stickers and signs available on their website which you can use in your photos and videos when sharing your story. Remember, you can use Essay Writer to help plan and write what you want to say – use the images and graphics in the mind map view to get those creative juices flowing! You never know what doors volunteering, and sharing you experiences, may open.
