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A concept that spreads the love through volunteering? Good deeds and dating in a single package? In this e-Volunteerism feature, volunteer-manager-turned-entrepreneur Hannah Whitehead describes her efforts to innovate against all odds—and yes, she brings Cupid along for the ride, too!

In June 2016, Whitehead launched a social enterprise called Good Deed Dating that works alongside charities in London to coordinate volunteering events for single people. In a nutshell, Good Deed Dating combines good deeds with dating, providing single Londoners with the chance to meet someone who shares their values while doing good for their communities. Spreading love while volunteering! The concept has been widely embraced and is growing, working to potentially change not only volunteering constructs but the lives of dating-challenged, adrift, Bridget Jones-like Londoners everywhere.  

“When I was working as a volunteer manager, I had big ideas and an appetite to make volunteering not only super accessible, but also genuinely engaging to as many people as possible,” writes Whitehead. “However, like many others I found myself hitting red tape and brick walls at every turn. I knew that there were hundreds of potential volunteers out there who just needed the right incentive to get involved.  Feeling frustrated, I decided to make the leap and set up Good Deed Dating to support charities to achieve more and empower volunteer managers to get creative with their volunteering programmes.”

With a great sense of adventure and a keen eye for program innovation, Whitehead describes why “thinking outside the traditional volunteering box can feel risky or like an uphill struggle, but it doesn’t have to be. Our goal is to spread the love through doing good and provide a new way for Londoners to meet likeminded people who share similar values whilst meaningfully contributing to their community.”

Volunteering is generally presented very seriously – largely because many of the causes volunteers support are very serious. But not all. And even grim situations can evoke laughter, since a sense of humor is a great coping mechanism.

Humor is also a great communication tool, especially when it tells the truth about a situation. In this Voices feature, we present examples of effective humor used in recruiting, training, and recognizing volunteers. These include YouTube postings, blog and newsletter entries, and cartoons. When can you provoke a smile and also generate action?

Music festivals have changed dramatically in the 50 years since Woodstock, that seminal, outdoor musical event in the United States that arguably started the much slicker concept we are familiar with today. Although music festivals in the wet UK often involve standing in pouring rain and sliding about in muddy fields, they are still for many people an essential cultural element of summer. Festivals attract all generations and ages from many social backgrounds and they cater to a wide range of tastes. The ever-growing number of new festivals suggests that demand for them will not be declining any time soon.

Primarily about entertainment, music festivals are big businesses and require complex logistical organization. And it is perhaps surprising at first to discover that so many music festivals involve volunteers. Who volunteers? Why do people volunteer at festivals? What are they attracted to and how are volunteers  recruited? What tasks do they carry out? How are they supported and their achievements acknowledged?

In this edition of Along the Web, writer Arnie Wickens looks at some major music festivals around the world to see whether websites can shed light on this unusual combination that mixes volunteering with money-making entertainment. He explores how and why the need for volunteers is identified where the ‘community’ being served only comes together for a few days or a weekend.

Barwon Health, the largest and most comprehensive regional health services in Australia, concluded several years ago that its 1,000 volunteers were ready and able to improve the health of their community. So in February 2014, the health service implemented a Volunteer Training and Development program that provided volunteers with opportunities to expand their healthcare knowledge, participate more concretely in the health service's mission, and ultimately build an empowered, healthy, and sustainable volunteer base for the future.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, Barwon Health’s Lyn Stack writes that “by investing in our volunteers through health knowledge, we utilise their support to directly improve the health and wellness of our community, while also providing volunteers with opportunities to increase confidence and decrease fear of entering the health sector.”  Stack describes how the program has expanded in two years to include Australia’s first Volunteer Health and Wellness Calendar, a Healthy Living Ambassadors program, and a national public awareness campaign to help volunteers expand their own health awareness to others. “By sharing this program,” Stack writes, “we can empower all volunteer leaders to invest in and reward their volunteers through the power of knowledge.”

In 2010, Volunteer NOW and the Voluntary Service Bureau in Belfast obtained Heritage Lottery Fund money to conduct a two-year oral and social history project to capture the volunteer stories of over 110 people in all walks of life in Northern Ireland. The work led to the publication of a book called Volunteer Voices: Belfast’s Creative Extremists and an exhibit open to the public. The book also included several historical accounts of the evolution of volunteerism in Belfast, sometimes bleak but also hopeful. As the Foreword states:

Most of the past forty years of Belfast’s history has been turbulent, fractured and painful. The City suffered and over 1,500 of its people died; countless others injured. During the early 1970s Belfast experienced one of the largest movements of population in Europe since the Second World War. Later with the erection of ‘peace walls’ and interface barriers, it became, and still is, a physically divided city…Amidst this reality, however, are countless stories of people with hope. People equipped with enthusiasm and energy who gave their time as volunteers…and “faced the dragon’s fire” believing it was possible to make a difference.

In Voices, we excerpt some of the many inspiring examples of the power of volunteering told in this book. 

We all recognize that 2015 became a landmark year for refugees, with unprecedented levels of migration unknown since the civil disruption of World War II. In this issue of Along the Web, writer Arnie Wickens explores how specific volunteer services around Europe responded to this humanitarian crisis. He also reviews what happens when other continents face an influx of refugees fleeing from natural or man-made disasters or persecution of some kind, and highlights how local volunteer programmes and initiatives often respond. 

 

"A person's a person, no matter how small." Dr. Seuss

This quote from American writer and cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel embodies the theme of this edition of Along the Web: children as volunteers. While not a new idea, the thought of incorporating the efforts of young children into volunteer programming may seem daunting for some. Increasing the use of this underutilized group of talented “small” people is the goal of this Along the Web and its selected websites, which include: examples of volunteer activities for children; best practices for working with young volunteers; and special issues to consider. Tips and guidanc

e for volunteer administrators are also be provided. In keeping with the words of Dr. Seuss, let’s remember that a volunteer’s a volunteer, no matter how small.