Someone once said that if you want to truly measure the positive impact that volunteers have on our well being across the UK, then just mobilise them to go ‘on strike’ for a day and then you will fully realise the enormous contribution that they make!
A bit drastic perhaps and we probably all know that most volunteers would never consent to taking that kind of action. But, we should never ever take that contribution for granted. In normal times, without willing and wonderful volunteers, hundreds more people would be lost at sea without RNLI volunteers and tho
usands more people would be more isolated and lonely without the friendly ear of a befriending volunteer. And those are just a couple of examples of the hugely beneficial and valuable voluntary contribution that thousands
of people make to so many facets of our society.
Now, more than ever during the coronavirus outbreak, the role played by volunteers has helped our nation to try to come to terms with and cope with the impact this crisis is having upon everyone in this country and other parts of the world too. We are all hearing of communities coming together and the ‘glue’ in that coming together is volunteering. Every day, stories reach us here at 3VA of incredible acts of kindness and people are courageously and selflessly joining with people who already volunteered previously, to come forward for the first time and lend a hand.
As many of you will know, 3VA has over the years run numerous volunteer training workshops and forums and we have been wonderfully supported in our work by our own dedicated team of volunteers and we wanted to mark what would ordinarily be national Volunteers Week (1-7 June) by offering our profound thanks and admiration for everything that volunteers are doing locally in our communities and further afield too.
We can’t gather together face to face to acknowledge that this year and that in itself hurts. Ideally, we would like to shake each and every volunteer by the hand and thank them personally for their contribution. It’s feels hard not to be able to do that. For now we will have to content ourselves with messages like this and sharing volunteering stories with the #CheersforVolunteers.
So…to everyone out there who has made and is making a voluntary contribution and to those people who are supporting volunteers to do that, all of us at 3VA want to offer an enormous ‘thank you’…what you are doing is not taken for granted, no matter how big or small you may feel that your contribution is…it matters and makes a real difference to everyone’s well-being…you are all stars…you are all heroes!
Wishing you a safe and happy Volunteers Week from everyone at 3VA.