Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Our design elves have been busy creating new posters to encourage more people to volunteer with two themes close to our hearts here at Volunteer Cornwall.

Click here to check out our new poster promoting volunteering within Uniformed Youth Services. These can be some of the most rewarding and enjoyable volunteering opportunities you can do.

Click here to see our new ‘Talent Team’ poster. We want to share the talent of Cornwall’s volunteers around and if you are ‘arty’ or ‘crafty’ then this might be for you.

Feel free to print off copies of the posters and put them up in your school, village hall, local shop or anywhere else (keep it legal, of course).

A Guardian Article published this week sings the praises of the voluntary arts & crafts sector and encourages more people to get involved.

You can read the article here and if it inspires you, why not consider joining our Talent Team to share your own artistic skills with others. Click here to find out more.

In recent years, Cornwall Voluntary Sector Forum has taken a role in acting as a first point of contact for the voluntary sector in emergency situations, working together with Volunteer Cornwall.

Following on from this, Emergency Management asked for a small standing group of key VCS organisations to be established to discuss the VCS role during an incident and in recovery situations, and this resulted in the creation of the VCS Resilience Group.

The VCS Resilience Group is made up of members of the voluntary and community sector, Cornwall Council as well as specialists in the area of emergency management.

The group aims to explore how the public and voluntary sector can work together to provide the best services in the event of an emergency, such as extreme weather or flu pandemics. The group will be a key point of contact in an emergency, with the knowledge and expertise to delegate tasks between other VCS organisations.

Members of the group have previously worked together to ensure public safety in extreme weathers. In the winter of 2011/2012, a ‘Winter Friend’ scheme was run successfully by Volunteer Cornwall. The scheme brought together volunteers and vulnerable people in their area to help with tasks such as picking up prescriptions for people with flu, visiting older residents to make sure they have access to the support they need, keeping pavements and driveways clear for neighbours and volunteer driving.

For further information on the VCS Resilience Group, please contact Mark Richardson on mark.richardson@cornwallvsf.org or 01872 241584.

The future is hard to predict but one way or another our economy and society will change dramatically as we adapt to the end of cheap fossil fuels, address the threat of runaway climate change and deal with realities of a failed financial system.
A new positive approach to this transition is emerging which sees it as an opportunity to change all of our lives for the better.  The myth that ‘there is no alternative’ is no solution at all and will simply make matters worse.

 The Festival of Transition embraces the opportunities that emerge in times of great change with events, talks and walks up and down the country culminating in a nationwide day of action and re-imagining on 20th-21st June 2012. Find out more by visiting the site

Stay ahead of all the latest volunteering news and opportunities in Cornwall. Sign up for our e-newsletter delivered to your inbox every 2 months by clicking the ‘subscribe’ button on any page of this website. Or find us on Facebook by clicking this link. Or if you are on Twitter, click here for our Twitter Stream.

We regularly post snippets of information which will be of interest to new and existing volunteers and host organisations covering everything from local volunteering and training opportunities to national news that might affect volunteers here in Cornwall.

And you can have your say – we welcome your comments on Facebook or Twitter or you can email us at any time – enquiries@volunteercornwall.org.uk

The enclosed papers relate to the Council VCS Commissioning Board,  the Primary Care Trust and police also attend these meetings.  Interesting papers  on Adult Care and Support Commissioning Strategies 2012-2015.  Next meeting May 2nd.

Agenda March 30th 2012

Minutes 29 2 2012

ACTION SHEET 29 2 12 amended

VCS Secretariat Report Mar 2012

VCS JCB report key asks 220312 final

Strategies – OS Feb 2012 v0 3

Commissioning_Intentions_v2 01

VCSCB Presentation – Social Value March 2012

We recently launched our ‘Before & After’ feature, inviting volunteers to show us the difference their volunteering makes in words, pictures or video.

You can see the latest images in our Facebook gallery by clicking here or read more about ‘Before & After’ by visiting our webpage which explains it in more detail.

Our colleagues at Arts for Health are offering free training for volunteers who are interested in getting involved in their local Memory Cafe.

With around 20 cafes up & running across Cornwall, this is a great opportunity to get involved in your local community, help others and have some fun in the process.

Click here to find out more

Sony has launched a new mobile volunteering application designed to transform the way people interact with charities to allow more people than ever to make a difference in their local communities.

Available from today, 20th March, +U is a mobile application which enables people to access bite-size volunteering opportunities. It provides instant access from Android devices to ‘Do-it.org’, the UK’s largest database of volunteer opportunities.

Click here to read more

The enclosed papers were presented to the Council VCS Commissioning Board, also in attendance were the the Primary Care Trust, police and a member of the Kernow Clinical Commissioning Group.  Interesting papers  on discretionary (non-domestic) rate relief. Next meeting March 30th.

Agenda VCS 29 02 2012

Minutes 16 12 11

ACTION SHEET 16 12 11 doc

Secretariat Report v2 march 12

Working with Prime Contractors – draft briefing note

KCC report to VSCB Feb12

Interim Report of the Discretionary Non-Domestic Rate Relief Guidance Working Group – Appendix 3

Interim Report of the Discretionary Non-Domestic Rate Relief Guidance Working Group – Appendix 4