National Volunteer Week honours the collective energies and mana of all volunteers in Aotearoa. Running from June 20-26th this year's theme is ‘Recognise, Connect, Reimagine’.

More than  one million people across Aotearoa say they volunteer for an organisation, contributing $4billion to the economy annually.

Volunteering is great for volunteers and their community. Communities with high numbers of volunteers are safer, stronger and more connected. 

Volunteers make new connections and friends, share and learn skills, gain a sense of purpose and satisfaction and hopefully really enjoy their involvement in an organisation they are passionate about.

Whether volunteers are keen to help for an hour or a day, as a one off commitment or continuing into the future, there are a fabulous range of roles to get involved in and share time and energy.

Volunteer South encourages organisation that involve volunteers to show thanks to their volunteering during NVW and highlight the impact they are making in their community. 

Whether volunteering for an event, sports, music, conversation, working with kids or caring for others, volunteers share their time, skills and energy and make our communities stronger.

Volunteer South - Central Lakes: Celebrating 10 years of volunteering 

Volunteer South - Central Lakes (formally Volunteering Central) promotes, strengthens and supports volunteering across the Central Lakes district, creating stronger more connected communities. 

We strive to ensure volunteering is a positive and rewarding experience for all involved and offer support, advice and training to organisations that involve volunteers. 

We encourage individuals to take an active role in their communities and provide a link between prospective volunteers that are willing to share their skills and energy, and organisations that involve volunteers.

Part of the wider Volunteer South family, 2021 sees the Dunedin office celebrating 35 years and Central Lakes 10 years of supporting volunteering in their communities.

Volunteer South - Central Lakes was established as an initiative of Central Lakes Trust in 2011 with the core aims of connecting volunteers to volunteer involving organisations, in addition to supporting organisations with training and networking opportunities. 

Over the last 10 years the team have fulfilled these initial objectives and grown and supported volunteering across a range of areas.

With a strong focus on relationships, we work hard to get to know our member organisations and their needs, and network with community based organisations to ensure we are aware of the bigger picture and avoid duplication of services.

Nationally we are a member of Volunteering New Zealand and the Volunteer Centre Network Aotearoa. Like volunteers - we are stronger when working together.

Our Central Lakes team has over 30 years experience working in the voluntary sector, here and overseas and are passionate about delivering the best possible service to volunteer involving organisations and volunteers.

We have over 200 organisations registered with us in the Central Lakes and making 100s of connections each year between potential volunteers and organisations in the community remains a core piece of work. 

Their dedicated Connections Coordinator Kirsty Miles is available to meet with volunteers who like the personal touch to help them identify rewarding roles to get involved in that match their skills, motivations and interests.

Volunteer South has a comprehensive list of organisation and volunteer roles on it’s website (www.volunteersouth.org.nz) where organisations can list their roles and volunteers can browse by area and category and sign up to express their interest in the role.

A relationship with The Wanaka App saw a volunteer tab being added in 2016 which Volunteer South manage in partnership with the app. This is a free service offered by The Wanaka App to help connect volunteers with organisations in Wanaka and is now also offered via The Central App, Queenstown App and most recently The Southland App. 

A partnership with Affleck O’Meara Accounting Superheroes sees a monthly advert in The News thanks to their ongoing support of promoting volunteering in the Central Lakes.

In addition to the above we get support from other local media and radio stations to help raise awareness of volunteering and are so grateful for their recognition of the importance of volunteering in their communities.

One of our core beliefs is that everyone has something to offer as a volunteer, regardless of their background, ethnicity, age, gender, ability, experience or circumstance and we work hard with organisations to encourage them to be accepting of volunteer from a range of backgrounds and capabilities.

We strive to break down the barriers to volunteering and regularly support individuals into volunteering who face additional barriers such as living with a disability, criminal record or mental health issue. We challenge discrimination and celebration and encourage diversity and inclusion.

Organisation Support

Volunteer South offers support to organisations using volunteers and helps with those setting up a volunteer programme or those already up and running and just needing a health check. 

With a focus on best practice in volunteering we strive to ensure all organisations give volunteers the best possible experience and ensure their actions are transformative and they understand the full impact of their actions. 

We do this through group workshops and face to face meetings.

We offer training and workshops relating directly to volunteering and wider areas that support the organisations we work with and enable them to increase their capacity. 

Upcoming training is in partnership with Sport Otago and consists of three online workshops from the team at EXULT https://www.exult.co.nz/ (fundraising, sponsorship and raising your profile)

We offer bi-monthly networking for Volunteer Managers - to share successes, challenges and ideas.

Youth

We work with local schools to enhance volunteering opportunities for their students. A key milestone was establishing our relationship with Wakatupu High School as they developed Give Time - a mobile website to encourage their students to volunteer and also our recent partnership with Dunstan High School connecting their students to the community as volunteers on their teacher only days. 

We hope to offer this to Mount Aspiring College and Cromwell College later this year.

We are working with Mount Aspiring College to support The William Pike Challenge service component and also their volunteer efforts during National Volunteer Week.

We are supporting QLDC who are encouraging their staff to volunteer during National Volunteer Week as part of their well-being focus during June.

Migrant volunteering

Along with other volunteer centres in New Zealand we are working with a focus on supporting our migrant community.  Locally we are working with the Kiwi Kit Charitable Trust to enable the migrant community to connect through volunteering.

Emergency Response

In addition to our core work we have an agreement with Civil Defence and our local councils to safely coordinate and support spontaneous volunteering in the event of an emergency. This was activated during the floods of 2019 and latterly during COVID 19. 

In the Central Lakes we received 632 offers of help and coordinated up to 275 volunteer activities each week during lockdown. 

Our work supporting the welfare response continues alongside planning for future emergency events and are taking our learning from the last 12 months forward.

As you can see Volunteer South is involved with a diverse range of organisations and whilst our core work is connecting volunteers to volunteer involving organisations - our work reaches far beyond this. 

If you would like to get involved with Volunteer South: Central Lakes in your local area, click here.