A little over 2 weeks into the UK Spring, and I've yet to reach for the cleaning products...
That said, colleagues at Macc can attest to my hoovering up of a stress ball innards (mung beans), that I split open, after taking great pride in making it earlier in the week at a Celebration of Innovation Event for youth sector resources.
I also met with Kathryn from Manchester Cares who facilitate a community network of young professionals and older neighbours; "hanging out and helping one another" in the city. MC is developing quickly, marked in part by the active recruitment of a Projects Officer for the Love Your Neighbour programme.
Thursday took me to the Whitworth Art Gallery for the first visit of the Association of Volunteer Managers to Manchester with their event: Volunteering for All: Measuring the health and wellbeing benefits. I particularly enjoyed meeting Val who gives her time to Macmillan Solutions in Greater Manchester by capturing and curating stories from people with a cancer diagnosis. We also talked about health and wellbeing and how much (or little) value and emphasis volunteer-involving organisations place on this as a component of their volunteering prgrammes.
You can catch up with all the action via Twitter: @AVMTweets or with #AVMLearn / #VMLearn.
On getting your house in order as a volunteer-involving organisation (spring cleaning)...
NCVO has updated its member resources on Volunteers and the Law, and in light of recent sector revelations, have made the safeguarding section available to non-members for free.
This dovetails nicely with our upcoming workshop in late April where we've incoporated these updates.
A great weekend to all!..