Our Volunteer Centre is happy to deal with email, phone or personal enquiries. Our offices are open to the public from 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday.
Volunteers are at the heart of every charity, voluntary organisation and community group in the country. Here at Cotswold Volunteer Centre we pride ourselves on the services we provide to both individuals and organisations.
Every Volunteer Centre has six 'core functions' through which it provides support for individual volunteers and Volunteer Involving Organisations.
- Brokerage: i.e. matching interest in volunteering with appropriate opportunities
- Marketing Volunteering: Encouraging local interest through promotional events and activities
- Good Practice Development: Research, training, support networks, partnership working and external quality accreditation.
- Development of Volunteering Opportunities: by working in close partnership with statutory, voluntary and private sector agencies.
- Policy Response and Campaigning: identify policy proposals or legislation that may impact on volunteering and ensure Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) input
- Strategic Development of Volunteering: As the local experts on volunteering we inform strategic thinking and planning at local, sub-regional, regional and national level.
Cotswold Volunteer Centre is an accredited member of Volunteering England (formerly the National Association of Volunteer Bureaux) and provides a wide range of information, advice and guidance to Volunteer Involving Organisations. CCVS (the parent organisation) is also an active member of the countywide Change Up Consortium known as the 'Gloucestershire Infrastructure Group (GIG)' and of the 'Gloucestershire Assembly' a county wide voluntary and community sector network closely linked to a range of strategic partnerships.
What is Volunteering? the 'Official Definition'
The UK does not actually have one common national definition of volunteering, although you can find definitions set out in government legislation and reports, as well in research on volunteering.
However, if we operate on the premise that the voluntary sector NOT government dictates what is and what isn't voluntary, then the follow key components are important:
- Volunteering is the commitment of time and energy for the benefit of society and the community, and can take many forms.
- Volunteering is freely undertaken (no coercion either directly or indirectly)
- Volunteering is not for financial gain (you don't get paid).
- Volunteering via informal community participation and campaigning is just as valid as volunteering through formally constituted public, private and voluntary organisations.
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