Frequently Asked Questions
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Q. What support will Volunteer Centre Greenwich provide?
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Q. Why get involved in ESV?
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Q. What costs are involved?
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Q. How many people will I need for a team challenge?
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Q. How popular is ESV?
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Q. What support will Volunteer Centre Greenwich provide? |
Volunteer Centre Greenwich can provide a brokerage service for employers and beneficiary organisations. We can support you throughout the volunteering process by:
- Assessing potential challenge opportunities and advising on the practical implications
- Advertising challenge opportunities to employers
- Introducing organisations with matching interests and needs and arranging site visits
- Providing advice and guidance on best practice in employee volunteering
- Conducting a risk assessment prior to the challenge and ensuring that all volunteers are aware of relevant health and safety issues
- Ensuring that a skilled professional is available to support and supervise volunteers where relevant
- Organising press and publicity for the event
- Conducting an evaluation of the event to learn from the experiences of the volunteers, employer and beneficiary organisation
Throughout 2005, the Year of the Volunteer, we will provide these services free of charge.
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Q. Why get involved in ESV? |
The benefits for employers
Employee volunteering can:
- Enhance the skills of employees
E.g. project management, communication, coaching and listening, team working, management, innovative
thinking, problem solving and time management.
- Improve staff motivation and commitment
- Improve levels of recruitment and retention
- Improve business performance
- Develop stronger links with the local community
- Improve public image
The benefits for employees
The experience of volunteering can enable employees to:
- Build new skills
- Increase confidence, motivation and self-esteem
- Meet new people
- Add variety to their work
- Make a difference to something they care about and gain a strong sense of personal satisfaction
- Gain a greater understanding of the needs and problems of their local communities and increase their sense of empathy with local people
- Have fun
The benefits for voluntary and community organisations
Voluntary and community organisations benefit from employee volunteering as they can:
- Access teams of volunteers who can plan and carry out major tasks
- Harness new skills, knowledge and energy
- Access business skills and expertise
- Gain a fresh perspective
- Improve understanding between themselves and the public and private sectors
- Raise the profile of the organisation and the issues it works to address.
The benefits for the wider community
Employee volunteering:
- Provides powerful resources for tackling social and environmental problems
- Builds relationships and increases understanding and empathy across society
- Acts as a catalyst to get people involved in their community
- Helps to build cohesive, prosperous, healthy and crime-free communities
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Q. What costs are involved? |
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We recommend that employers make £20 to £25 available for each employee to cover the costs of materials
and equipment for the challenge as well as refreshments. This is negotiable depending upon the
beneficiary organisation, the work involved and the funding available.
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Q. How many people will I need for a team challenge? |
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A challenge can be chosen and designed to suit the number of volunteers available. A team can
vary in size from five to 50 people.
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Q. How popular is ESV? |
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One in five employees in England and Wales work for employers that support schemes for volunteering. 1.5
million employees participate in employer supported volunteering schemes and the hours they contribute
have an equivalent value of £0.8 billion.
Over 45 businesses in the Borough of Greenwich are working with Volunteer Centre Greenwich to develop
employee volunteering programmes.
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