Volunteer Ireland Achieves Investing in Volunteers Quality Standard

Volunteer Ireland is delighted to announce that we have achieved Investing in Volunteers (IiV), the international quality standard for excellence in volunteer management.

We are proud to join the growing number of volunteer involving organisations in Ireland to achieve the standard, and as the only volunteer development organisation in the UK or Ireland to achieve it this is a huge milestone.

According to Nina Arwitz, Volunteer Ireland CEO, “As the national volunteer development organisation it was important for us to lead by example in this area. We involve volunteers in many areas of our work including our corporate programme, public affairs, communications, design and office admin; as well as our Event Volunteers programme which has 581 volunteers. We are immensely proud of the high standards we have set for volunteer involvement and management. It’s our priority to make sure all volunteers have an excellent experience with us and that we set a high standard within our own organisation.”

Diversity is a cornerstone of our volunteer programme with over 76 nationalities represented across our Event Volunteers team alone.

Clodagh Scott, an Event Volunteer, felt immense pride at the achievement: “I am excited that Volunteer Ireland has achieved IiV, it’s a fantastic organisation and my favourite group to volunteer with.  I love volunteering with them due to the open and safe space they create, this is a group that gives me a sense of belonging and acceptance.”

More information on the Investing in Volunteers Quality Standard can be found here.

Domestic Abuse Volunteer Named Volunteer of the Year

Domestic Abuse Volunteer Named Volunteer of the Year

Mary Fitzgerald from Co. Clare was today named Christine Buckley Volunteer of the Year at the Volunteer Ireland Awards. Over 1 million people in Ireland volunteer and these awards aim to say thank you for the hard work, dedication and impact of volunteers across the country.

From an early age Mary wanted to make a difference to people’s lives. In her teens, she was moved by the pictures on TV of the street children in India and she travelled to volunteer with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.

On her return, she was touched by the plight of Clare families fleeing from domestic abuse who were forced to stay overnight in the reception of the local Garda station. As there was nowhere in Clare for them to go, Mary took some of these women and children into her own home. Wanting to do something about the situation, she founded Clare Haven Services in 1993 which eventually led to the development of a 24 hour refuge for those escaping domestic abuse.

Mary is also passionate about helping young girls and boys identify abusive patterns early on in a relationship and in the 1990’s she delivered school workshops on healthy relationships. This has now become part of the current SPHE programme in secondary schools.

According to Volunteer Ireland CEO Nina Arwitz “Mary is a real inspiration and the embodiment of the volunteering spirit. She saw a need in her commnunity and took action to make a difference in people’s lives. All of our nominees and winners tonight have incredible stories to share and we are delighted to be able to thank and celebrate them tonight. Hopefully their stories will inspire others to get involved in their communities.”

Other winners on the night include Laura Brennan who, despite having been diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer at age 25, advocates tirelessly to raise awareness of the HPV vaccine. The award for Outstanding Group was taken home by Pullough Community Action Group who created a community shop in their village which is fundraised for and manned by volunteers.

This year we are pleased to partner with Healthy Ireland who share our ethos of volunteering contributing to healthy, vibrant communities. Kate O’Flaherty, Head of Healthy Ireland said
“We are delighted to partner with Volunteer Ireland on this year’s awards. Volunteering has been proven to have many health benefits to both the individual and local communities. Tonight’s nominees are a great example of volunteers getting involved in their communities and making them healthier, happier places to live.”

The eleventh Volunteer Ireland Awards took place on Friday 7th December in the Carlton Hotel, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15. Winners were announced in eleven categories along with the overall Christine Buckley Volunteer of the Year. The award is named after Christine Buckley who was a vigorous camapigner for those who suffered institutional abuse and sadly passed away in 2009. Volunteer Ireland is proud to honour the memory of such an inspirational volunteer.

Ends

 

Notes to Editor

Volunteer Ireland Awards Winners 2018

Volunteer of the Year

Mary Fitzgerald, Haven Horizons, Clare

Having been touched by the number of people fleeing domestic abuse in the Clare area, Mary Fitzgerald took some of the women and children into her own home and then set up Clare Haven Services to provide 24 hour refuge. Seeing the need, she also set up Haven Horizons to establish prevention programmes which address the lack of awareness and education around the underlying causes of domestic abuse.

Animals and Environment

Maeve O’Donoghue, Mullingar Dog Shelter, Westmeath

Maeve O’Donoghue set up and runs the Mullingar Dog Shelter Facebook page dedicated to reuniting dogs with the their owners and in some cases finding them new homes. The number of dogs put to sleep since Maeve began volunteering has reduced significantly.

Arts, Culture and Media

Louise Borre, Galway International Arts Festival (and others), Galway

Louise Borre is such a vital volunteer at the Galway International Arts Festival, she was promoted to Big Top Team Leader and had venue managers request her on their team. She is invaluable to the festival but still find time to volunteer for Cosáin Galway too.

Camapigning and Awareness Raising

Laura Brennan, HSE (and others), Clare

At just 25 years old and with a terminal cervical cancer diagnosis, Laura Brennan spends much of her time advocating in favour of the HPV vaccine, encouraging parents to protect their daughters from HPV and cervical cancer through various media engagements, public speaking opportunities and social media.

Children and Youth

David O’Hara, Solas Project, Kildare

Dave O’Hara is a mentor in Solas Project’s After School’s club for children aged 11 – 13. Dave is a volunteer of all trades – he is the handy man, the class clown, the extra pair of hands, the homework genius and also a great support to staff.

Community

Cormac Sertutxa, Irish Red Cross – Tralee Branch, Kerry

Cormac Sertutxa has taken on many roles since he joined the Irish Red Cross in Tralee four years ago. Through his role as Health and Safety Officer he develops supports and services to vulnerable people in his local community and has become one of the first people trained as a Psychological First Aid Facilitator.

Health and Disability

Mary Arrigan-Langan, Octopus Swimming Club, Galway

Mary Arrigan-Langan set up Octopus Swimming Club in 1981 for people with physical disabilities. The club allows people with a range of disabilities to become ‘water free’ and get the physical and emotional benefits from swimming and being part of a club.

Safety and Emergency Services

Nancy White, Lorrha Community Responder Group, Tipperary

Nancy White single handedly brought together a group of volunteers and set up the Lorrha Community Responder Group. She has organised an incredible number of CPR/AED training sessions across the area and acquired 5 new defibrillators for the community.

Social Work and Social Inclusion

Sheila Busher, Arklow Community Action Resource Centre, Wicklow

Sheila Busher has been helping her community for over 15 years. With Arklow Community Action Resource Centre, she currently organises two nights of the Foodcloud deliveries to over 160 families in need in the local area.

Sports and Recreation

Sinead Kelly, Raphoe Town Football Club, Donegal

In just 2 years, Sinead Kelly took Raphoe Town Football Club from less than 10 girls playing to over 30 players and a number of teams entered in the Donegal Women’s League. Sinead has positioned the club in the heart of the community, building strong and positive links with local schools and clubs and making an impact in local community initiatives.

Outstanding Group

Pullough Community Action Group – Community Shop Volunteers (8), Offaly

Pullough Community Action Group was set up by a group of 8 volunteers who felt the small rural village needed to have a shop where local people could buy basic groceries and meet their neighbours on a regular basis. The shop – which is manned by volunteers and brought new life to the village – is open seven days a week.

Volunteer Manager of the Year

Sara Murphy, Victim Support at Court (V-SAC), Dublin

Sara Murphy manages the Victim Support area in the Criminal Courts of Justice which deals mainly with murder and rape trials. Sara is known and loved by the court services, gardai and the legal professionals within the court. She is as much a friend as a manager to all the volunteers and other staff members of the service and ensures that everyone feels comfortable and confident with what they are doing.

People helping people – LinkedIn’s most powerful tool

 

Eamonn Fitzgerald is LinkedIn for Good Manager (EMEA) based at LinkedIn’s Dublin Office. He talks to us about the importance of employee volunteering within the LinkedIn community.

When I joined the LinkedIn for Good team back in 2016, I was excited at the prospect of working for a company that had such an ingrained culture of helping others. Creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce – that’s our mantra, in fact, it’s LinkedIn’s vision statement. That means that the goal isn’t just the focus of the LinkedIn for Good team, but it’s what every employee at LinkedIn has committed to pursuing.

Now while we know that talent is distributed equally, access to opportunity is not. Individuals from certain communities, and of specific backgrounds, face unique hurdles to economic opportunity. That context, that reality, informs our work as the social impact arm of LinkedIn. How can we leverage our core assets to remove these hurdles, empowering all individuals to connect to opportunity?

When we talk about core assets, we’re talking about more than just money. In fact, ask any member of my team what our most powerful asset is – grant donations are probably pretty far down that list. The real game-changer is our people. That’s why we place LinkedIn employees, and LinkedIn members, at the centre of everything we do. In fact, we have three distinct channels that unlock the power of the volunteer.

1 – Empowering our employees to pursue their passions:

At LinkedIn we provide space for our employees to pursue their own passions, and to engage with the causes they care about. Late last year we launched a new internal employee social impact platform called LinkedIn Gives – a place for employees to donate, fundraise, and volunteer with any nonprofits they believed in. This platform empowers our employees to make a difference in whatever way they see fit, ensuring that we have an ability to track employee volunteer hours and contributions across all 30+ LinkedIn locations around the world.

Allowing some of our employee volunteers to identify their own opportunities is an important feature of our overall volunteer strategy, often acting as a great first point of contact between LIFG and a new employee. Once our employee volunteers become more comfortable with the concept of volunteering, we’re then able to direct them to more high-skill or strategic volunteering opportunities with our flagship nonprofit partners, where they can make use of their deep knowledge of our platform to positively impact people’s lives.

2 – Connecting our employees to the right partners:

While we might be the experts on all things LinkedIn, we accept that we aren’t always the experts on the unique employment challenges faced by some. That’s why we’re committed to a cross-sector partnership model, collaborating with NGOs that are already successfully solving these problems, and that would be able to leverage the time and talent of our employee volunteers. One of our strongest partners in Ireland is Jobcare – an NGO that has helped thousands of jobseekers escape the trap of unemployment over the past 25 years.

Partners like Jobcare are the perfect fit for LinkedIn Coaches, our structured employee volunteer programme that connects participants to mentors, jobs and networks. To date this partnership has seen us reach almost 1,000 jobseekers through a variety of programs and supports. These include bi-monthly training workshops in our EMEA headquarters in Dublin, working with around 60 jobseekers per session to teach them all about leveraging LinkedIn for their job search. In addition, our employees offer mock interview trainings and staff advisory stations at Jobcare’s regular networking events. Allowing our employees to find the volunteering opportunity that appeals most to them and adds genuine value to the participants themselves.

3 – Inviting our members on the journey:

At LinkedIn, when we talk about volunteering, we don’t just think about our employees. At our core, we’re a community of more than 560 million members, all of whom pursue their own version of success. However, they also want to help others achieve that goal too. More than 41 million LinkedIn members have proudly listed their past volunteering experiences on their LinkedIn profiles. This isn’t just to brag, it’s known to positively increase their chances of landing that next job. 27% of jobseekers are more likely to be hired, when unemployed, if they volunteer.

In addition, over 10 million LinkedIn members who have proactively signalled their interest in finding volunteering, board service, or mentoring opportunities on our platform. Our Volunteer Marketplace serves up skilled volunteer opportunities to our members across Ireland, France, the United Kingdom and Canada. In 2017 we connected more than 388,000 members to volunteer opportunities around the world. Our partnership with Volunteer Ireland has allowed us to share thousands of local volunteering roles with our members.

The long and short of it is that no matter your product, no matter your resources, people remain the key ingredient to successful corporate social impact programs worldwide. Employee volunteers can add genuine value to the right partners when given the chance, and organisations like Volunteer Ireland help companies like LinkedIn to mobilise our users at scale. We hope you’ll reflect on the ways that you might get involved with local organisations or through your own corporate social impact programmes this National Volunteering Week.

Volunteer Ireland Thanks Volunteers for Dedication During Extreme Weather

Emergency Vehicle

Volunteer Ireland has today expressed gratitude to all of those volunteers who did their utmost to help their community during the recent extreme weather conditions. Thousands of volunteers across the country came together to support those in need.

According to Volunteer Ireland CEO Nina Arwitz, the spectacular response from volunteers came as no surprise. “Ireland has the highest levels of volunteering in Europe and the voluntary effort over the last number of days exemplifies this. Thousands of volunteers battled the elements to ensure roads were clear, provide support to the health service and rescue people from dangerous situations. It is a testament to their hard work and dedication that there have been so few reports of accidents and injuries. Thousands of volunteers also braved the snow to deliver services to the homeless, man helplines and ensure that that those most at risk were not left behind.

Ireland also has high levels of what we term ‘informal volunteering’ – people helping a neighbour, a friend or the local community. Social media is awash with stories of people digging their neighbours’ driveways, buying food for elderly friends and coming together to make way for emergency vehicles. We extend our deepest thanks to every person that made a difference this past week.”

Anthony Lawlor, Irish Red Cross National Director of Units echoed the thanks for the volunteers. “The Irish Red Cross volunteers have completed in excess of 5,000 volunteer hours nationwide since last Tuesday and we’re extremely grateful to them and their families for the commitment and dedication they have shown.”

Commander John Wright, National Director of the Order of Malta Ambulance Corps stated “The teamwork demonstrated by the volunteers in all the agencies was truly amazing and one we were proud to be part of. In particular, I am grateful to our volunteers for the sheer scale of calls they covered (216 out of 470) throughout the duration of the event”.

Oliver Allen RGN, St John Ambulance National Volunteer Coordinator added “Our volunteers provided a range of support such as basic humanitarian assistance to those in airports by providing blankets and stretchers for those whose flights were cancelled which afforded them some degree of comfort. Volunteers also provided ambulance transports to help get patients to and from important hospital appointments. Whilst we transported patients we also transported staff to hospitals and assisted community nurses and palliative care nurses to get to their patients. We are very grateful to our amazing and dedicated volunteers for giving up their time for sake of others, which is in fact one of our organisation’s mottoes “Pro Utilitate Homminum” or “In the Service of Humanity””.

Notes

About the Irish Red Cross

The Red Cross Movement, with 97 million members worldwide, is the largest humanitarian aid organisation in the world today. It was founded by Swiss business man Henri Dunant following the battle of Solferino in northern Italy in 1859, which saw over 40,000 people killed or wounded. The Irish Red Cross was formally established in 1939. Their programmes and services aim to prevent and alleviate human suffering.

About the Order of Malta Ambulance Corps

The Order of Malta Ambulance Corps (The Ambulance Corps) as part of Order of Malta Ireland is one of the largest voluntary providers of first aid, ambulance and community care services in Ireland. It was established in 1938 and has developed into an organization of more than 3,000 members across more than 80 units throughout communities in Ireland and Northern Ireland.  The Ambulance Corps operates as a volunteer led organization, with a small number of full-time paid administrators working in headquarters on Clyde Road in Dublin 4.

About St John Ambulance Ireland

St John Ambulance is an international humanitarian organisation with over 500,000 volunteers in over 20 different countries. It has been offering First Aid and CPR training as well as assistance to sick and injured members of the public for over 100 years. The organisation is run by unpaid volunteers at all levels, up to and including the Commissioner, the de facto Chief Executive Officer. St John Ambulance Ireland began in in Guinness’s Brewery in 1903 and since then the organisation has been at the forefront of acute care and training throughout Ireland for over 100 years.

Report On Impact of Volunteering on Health and Well-Being Launched

To celebrate National Volunteering Week 2017, Volunteer Ireland launched a new report exploring the impact of volunteering on the health and well-being of volunteers.

There are numerous existing studies which link volunteering to health and well-being. This report takes a different approach by exploring exactly how people feel when they volunteer, what it is about volunteering that elicits these feelings and how exactly volunteering impacts on the overall well-being of volunteers. It also identifies the various factors which affect how volunteering impacts a person’s well-being.

The report combines a short literature review along with the findings of primary research (national survey and focus groups) by Volunteer Ireland involving almost 2,000 volunteers. The full report can be accessed here.