Two national events will be features of Volunteer Awareness Week 2010 - a one day workshop on youth volunteering involving a lot of young people and the release of the report on the results of the recent survey of those who manage volunteers.

Two national events will be features of Volunteer Awareness Week 2010 - a one day workshop on youth volunteering involving a lot of young people and the release of the report on the results of the recent survey of those who manage volunteers. Volunteering NZ (VNZ) is involved in hosting both events.

Each event has an important connection to the theme for the Week, Volunteering across the Generations. Young people are an important generation – they are volunteers now and needed for the future. Managers of volunteers face challenges in recruiting and managing volunteers across all generations and these will be highlighted in the survey report. A significant number of the respondents to the survey were from the arts community.

A key objective of the Awareness Week is to encourage more people to volunteer – “raising people not money”. Organisations participating in the Week can be expected to highlight the opportunities for volunteering across the generations, how different forms of volunteering appeal to particular generational groups and various examples of intergenerational volunteering such as family volunteering.

Volunteering NZ as the co-ordinating agency for the Week has promotional material (posters and balloons) and online resources to assist organisations participate in the week. The online resource is an Awarness Week toolkit which can be accessed by visiting www.volunteeringnz.org.nz and going to the Resources page and the Promotional Toolkits option. The Volunteer Centres located in many regions of New Zealand will play leading roles within their communities arranging a variety of events and will help publicise the events of local agencies in their district. A list of their contact details can be found in the Contacts page of the website.

The Youth Volunteering workshop will highlight the perspectives of young people and what organisations need to do to involve then in their programmes. Young people have lead roles in organising the workshop. On the day around 20 young people will join them and work with senior representatives from a number of organisations to identify reasons that more young people do not volunteer and what concrete actions the organisations need to take to change this. The results will be passed on to the wider volunteering community. The workshop will be held in Wellington on Tuesday 22 June.

The report on the survey of managers of volunteer programmes is being jointly released by VNZ and Victoria University on Wednesday 23 June. Hon Tariana Turia, Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector will be present and speak at the event. The survey was undertaken by Victoria over the summer months with active support from VNZ. Over 800 responses were received with a good spread geographically and over the many sectors with volunteer programmes. The report will include recommendations for follow up action which will assist the work of a special group set up under the auspices of VNZ to work on the professional development of volunteer management.

Organisations holding Awareness Week events can have these listed on a special Events Calendar on VNZ’s website www.volunteeringnz.org.nz. –click on List Your Event in the top right hand corner.