Volunteering Liverpool

• Update on figures: Volunteers – 1453, opportunities – 331, organisations – 208
• LJMU and LSU are now partners of Volunteering Liverpool
• Edge Hill are considering becoming a partner
• The national volunteering site, DO-IT, will potentially cease to exist due to a lack of funding and therefore, it is possible that other volunteer centres across Merseyside and Lancashire may be interested in joining Volunteering Liverpool.
• Two volunteers are now volunteering with Volunteering Liverpool. The main projects that they will be working on is researching the volunteer conversion rates, analysing the current opportunities on the site and populating it with more, and organising a networking event for organisations and volunteer.
• The funding bid for a part time staff member for Volunteering Liverpool was unfortunately not successful.

 LGoS Projects

• The Roof Garden, University Children’s Centre, Foodcycle and Leave Liverpool Tidy are all developing well.
• The roof garden event that LGoS organised in partnership with University of Liverpool School of Environmental Sciences and Scibar was a success and the school of environmental sciences are keen to continue working with us.
• The roof garden, university children’s centre garden plot and Foodcycle project leaders were given the opportunity to attend can cook sessions (an imitative funded by the council) this week. The main aim was to teach them how to cook healthy meals using locally grown produce. They will use this knowledge to develop the projects that they are involved in.
• Leave Liverpool Tidy has now got a team of volunteer project leaders. We have received really positive feedback from the City Council about the project who are keen to expand it next year (this year it will cover the Princes Park and Greenbank wards).
• Kathy, Sam and I sit on the transition steering group with Clare Scott. We are currently in the process of working with Clare to brand all of our green projects with all of the university’s green projects as ‘transition projects’ (similar to Edinburgh University Transition). There has been great enthusiasm from senior staff members in the university about us developing our transition work. However, due to very limited resources, LGoS and the university have reached maximum capacity and are unable to expand. Therefore, we will be writing a business plan to be presented to the Sustainability Advisory Board asking for more resources to develop this work.  

Community Engagement

Community Rep Scheme

• The reps are currently involved in promoting elections
• The Georgian Quarter reps are working with the Georgian Quarter housing group to plan a family fun day on 2^nd April in Faulkner square.
• The Smithdown reps are working on a ‘chooseday’ event, where various voluntary organisations, LGoS/LSU activity groups, careers department will showcase their activities to 14-16 year olds at Harthill community centre to encourage them to get more involved in the community and inform them about options available to them after they leave school.

Investing in Volunteers Award

• LGoS is now in the process of completing the third step, the development plan (deadline 31^st March). The plan identifies the actions that we need to complete to meet the standard for the practices that we did not meet.

 Volunteering Training

• The £1000 that we secured from VOLA has been spent on running two training sessions for volunteers: ‘Managing volunteers’ and ‘Events Fundraising Management’. These were chosen as volunteers at the volunteer focus groups were keen to develop their skills in these areas. The training will be delivered by the Directory for Social Change on 6^th May. It is directed at project leaders, activity group convenors and staff members involved in these activities.

Volunteering Strategy

• Morven, Sam and I will be meeting with Jill Forest next week to discuss the volunteering strategy. The proposal is to re-write it and we will use this opportunity to discuss with the university, the idea of them populating Volunteering Liverpool with their opportunities.