The Contribution of Volunteering to Employment, Skills and Training

Volunteer Centres can provide a range of services for people who are unemployed or facing redundancy, to help them get back into work.  

 

Volunteering provides opportunities for people to undertake formal and informal training, and to gain new skills and experience, often to enable them to secure paid employment or to progress in their career.   

 

Volunteer Centres in York and North Yorkshire help to improve people’s skills and employability by supplying volunteering services to a range of employment and skills projects, as well as running their own employment and skills activities.  Activities include:

 

• Placing volunteers into opportunities to gain the skills and experience needed for paid work.
   
• Running an Introduction to Volunteering programme for people who have low confidence, low skills levels, little or no previous experience, and who might face other barriers to volunteering, such as disability, mental health issues, or learning difficulties.
   
• Supporting students to volunteer to enhance UCAS applications.
   
• Working with students to volunteer as part of their citizenship curriculum.

 

• Delivering the department for Work and Pensions volunteering scheme to encourage people who are out of work to take part in volunteering activities.  Success rates for the scheme in York and North Yorkshire far exceed rates elsewhere in the region.
   
• Brokerage, training, advice and support to other organisations that work to improve skills and employment through on-the-job training, such as informal apprenticeships, and finding volunteering placements for organisations that support individuals to overcome a variety of barriers to economic development.
   
• Delivering structured programmes of volunteering that lead to informal and formal training, including links with national programmes such as Personal Best, aimed at engaging those furthest from the labour market to undertake training to volunteer for the 2012 Games.

Department for Work and Pensions Volunteer Brokerage Scheme

 

In 2009 York and North Yorkshire Volunteer Centres, and Selby AVS, joined forces to deliver on the Department for Work and Pensions Volunteer Brokerage Scheme to encourage people who have been out of work for 6 months or more to volunteer.  

 

The purpose of the scheme is to introduce people who are unemployed to meaningful activity as a stepping-stone to longer term volunteering and, ideally, employment.

 

York and North Yorkshire Volunteer Centres significantly outperform the national average and many of the other bodies contracted in delivering the DWP Scheme.  

 

Feedback from Volunteering England suggests that DWP has been impressed by the speed and ease with which Volunteer Centres ran with the scheme. Local knowledge coupled with existing systems, relationships and procedures undoubtedly played a large part in ensuring the success of the scheme.

 

York and North Yorkshire also successfully applied for a small amount of additional funding from Volunteering England to further increase the sub-regional conversion rate, which has the full backing and commitment of all Volunteer Centres.

 

The success of the DWP scheme in the sub-region is a testament to the capability, determination, and cooperation of York and North Yorkshire Volunteer Centres.

 

Links & Resources

 

Below are some leaflets we think might be useful to you:

 

Volunteering Into Employment leafletx

 

Volunteering While Getting Benefits leaflet

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