The vinvolved team in Hertfordshire runs the national youth volunteering programme for 16 – 25 year olds in the county. The project aims to harness young people’s skills, ideas, passion and enthusiasm in all sorts of ways and channel it into developing and improving their communities through volunteering. We work in partnership with Hertfordshire’s Volunteer Centres to generate and advertise new opportunities, improve standards of volunteer management, and promote the 360 degree benefits of volunteering.
The key objectives of vinvolved are to embed a volunteering ethos amongst young people, which not only encourages them to give their time to organisations to help support their work and build their capacity, but to develop their own projects as young community activists and leaders.
vinvolved has 3 Youth Volunteering Development Managers (YVDMs) spread across the county; YVDMs are experts in providing advice, support, and training to organisations on including young people in their work. To find out who your local YVDM is click here.
Your local YVDM can provide advice and training about involving young volunteers, which can cover anything from how to start recruiting and supporting young volunteers, to developing taster days as ways of raising your organisation’s profile and improving young people’s awareness and understanding of your work.
YVDMs can also give you support and advice on including specific kinds of young people in your work e.g. young offenders, young people with learning disabilities, etc. They’re also useful resources if you already have young volunteers in your organisation; your YVDM can help you identify development opportunities to increase their skills, or work with you to evolve or refresh their roles.
Sometimes an individual young volunteer may worry you – perhaps they are finding it hard to overcome their shyness and join in, or perhaps their attitude is a cause for concern and you’re not sure how to deal with it; whatever the issue, your YVDM is there to support and advise you. Support around individual volunteers is always confidential; though where a young person may be a risk – to self, to others and also from others - mutually agreed action will be taken to ensure safeguarding is prioritised and risks are addressed.
For more information, please contact your local YVDM to discuss your requirements or check out our Training pages for details on forthcoming events in your area.
Creating new opportunities.
If you would like to start involving young volunteers, have a specific vacancy you’d like filled, or a project you’d like a group of young volunteers to tackle, please contact your YVDM and make an appointment for them to pay you a visit; it’s really useful to visit your organisation so we can get a good feel for what you do, which will help us not only to advertise your opportunities in the most effective way but to identify which kinds of young people would be most interested in what you have to offer.
Your YVDM will work closely with you to develop appealing opportunities, and to complete the necessary registration paperwork; registration enables vinvolved to make sure that opportunities are set up in ways that will make sure young people are safe, supported, and able to grow and achieve throughout their volunteering experience.
You opportunities will be advertised on www.vinspired.com, the national portal where young people go to find out about volunteering in their local area, and also through the face to face work we do with young people in schools, colleges, and in the wider community.
We can’t guarantee to fill your opportunities, but with our expertise we will certainly give them every chance of resulting in a successful brokerage.
Brokering young people
Young people can express an interest in your opportunities through a number of routes – through www.vinspired.com, through contact with one of the vinvolved Team, or by visiting a Volunteer Centre etc. Sometimes young people may make contact with you directly, sometimes vinvolved or Volunteer Centre staff may approach you with a potential candidate.
If you have a preference as to how you would like brokerage to take place then please make sure you discuss this with your YVDM when you’re setting your opportunities up. It may be you would prefer to interview potential candidates, or need them to fill in an application form; we can help and support young people through these processes, and also provide you with advice and guidance on selecting volunteers to make sure you don’t miss out on discovering hidden talent!
