It’s National Volunteering Week (May 12-18) and Fingal Volunteer Centre is encouraging people to give their skills and time to charities, community groups and people in need. Fingal Volunteer Centre Manager, Stuart Garland, said it is easy to get involved by searching, I-VOL, the nationwide database of volunteering opportunities. Fingl Volunteer Centre has lots of opportunities available.
“People can go to www.volunteer.ie, find I-VOL and and find one off National Volunteering Week projects, short-term roles and ongoing ways to volunteer in their own community. If people do not have Internet access, they can also call the Centre and we can talk though what might suit.”
“There are currently 3,100 opportunities to volunteer across the country and the top three categories are in youth work, befriending / mentoring and teaching.” The Centre also announced new additions to the database, such the ability of organisations to search for volunteers by skills and expertise. “People can either search for an opportunity themselves, or can now place their own details on I-VOL or with a Volunteer Centre, and let organisations come to them.” 70% say Ireland would be ‘much worse’ without volunteers National Volunteering Week is coordinated by Volunteer Ireland and local volunteer centres. Volunteer Ireland today announced details of a survey of 1,000 people. In the survey 70% said that Ireland would be a ‘much worse’ place to live in without volunteers, 67% said that volunteers are underappreciated and undervalued and 73% have said that volunteering can help unemployed people improve skills and experience to increase their employability.
In 2013 over 14,900 volunteers registered through volunteer.ie and local Volunteer Centres. These volunteers clocked up over 500,000 hours of voluntary work. This work has an equivalent economic value of over €10 million.
