Let's face it, most people who volunteer are passionate about helping people - but for some influencing social change is also important. Volunteering for a campaigning organisation allows volunteers to help make things happen for large charities. Find out what the grass roots activists get up to here.

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Tuesday Jul 25, 2006

Training other Outreachers

with all of the craziness of losing my job and going backpacking i forgot to mention the fantastic training session i was involved in. London Oxfam Outreach has recently finished a huge recruitment campaign. To keep these budding new volunteers enthused about campaigning i as asked to help run a training session, a cramming session of all of the exciting campaigns Oxfam is running and how to support them. I led a small session on campaigning skills, the best ways to target members of the public and tackle awkward questions. I was able to use plenty of interesting case studiess from the gigs i have been too - some more positive than others and share the secrets of gaining peoples attention when they are queueing for the toilets or cash machines!

Posted by Helen Bryant ( 2:35 PM )
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Im back!!

hi there, just incase you missed me dont worry i havent fallen off the face of the planet! Since i wrote last quite a few crazy things have happened. Firstly, i lost my job as my employers were unable to find the funds to renew my contract - not good news! so i decided to escape and go back-packing around Finland for the best part of a month, very beautiful full of trees lakes and moomins (hopefully you will be able to remember those fab cartoon characters). So now im back and job hunting,  the nice people at Oxfam have offered to keep me busy while i look for something else, i will keep you up-to-date  with all of the exciting things i will be getting up to with them.  As well as applying for jobs, i am busy decorating my wellies and preparing to spend the weekend at WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival, stewarding on behalf of Oxfam. Just hoping the beautiful weather continues.

Posted by Helen Bryant ( 2:24 PM )
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Wednesday Jul 19, 2006

Training and PARTY!!!

This week is busy, today I delievered along with another young volunteer, training around participation to volunteers, a module as part of a volunteer training course Ive been ivolved in evaluating in the past.

The PARTY!!! the group for young volunteers; also managed to finally meet up with new members which was good to see, and finally seems to be moving along nicely, and lots of plans to go ahead with.  Next meeting is arranged to happen soon as well.  So its all go over the summer.  We also managed to get a worker to help run the group and to take it forward, which myself and another young volunteer took part in being on the interviewing panel for the post, which starts on Monday but the new worker did come along to todays meeting, which was helpful. 

We're holding a funday next week as well where we'll be getting all regional groups together to discuss volunteering what it means to them talking about the PARTY!!! and discussing with young people what they think about volunteering, some will already be volunteers and some wont so itll be good to see two perspectives-looking at :- What the barriers are to young people if they want to volunteer.  Looking at young peoples experiences of volunteering among other things.

The training for social worker has now had the venue changed again and will now be in a local college.  We've put a plan together for our volunteers +participation workshop which is going to be called The ViP's I think thats what we decided haha stands for Volunteering In Participation fitting both themes of the workshop nicely.We just really need to start getting all the materials together that we need, so its coming along as well.

Ohh and looks like we might have a date for the B'OSCARS again next year!  Which people are still talking about, even just today.

Posted by Moira ( 9:39 PM )
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