National Volunteers' Week - 1st - 7th June 2019

Emma Barton

This week, 1st – 7th June, is National Volunteers’ Week (https://volunteersweek.org/about-volunteers-week/what-is-volunteers-week/), which celebrates the achievements and contributions of current volunteers and aims to help potential volunteers find suitable roles. If you are a current or past psychology student, you will have heard us talking about the importance of volunteering. Psychology is a competitive field when it comes to finding jobs or gaining places on post graduate courses. Volunteering will help you to gain relevant experience working with people in supportive roles to enhance your CV and make you more employable. But – and this is a very important but – it will do something much more than that. 

For those of you who are not sure what you want to do after you’ve graduated, volunteering will allow you to have a go at different sorts of roles and work out what you enjoy, what you’re good at and what you might want to pursue as a career. For those of you who have clear career plans, it will help you to gain experience but will also give you the chance to make sure that sort of work really suits you, just in case the reality is different from the idea. Sometimes finding out what you don’t want to do is just as important as knowing what you do want to do. 

Volunteering will also help your learning, you will be able to apply your classroom learning to what you do in your role, and vice versa, helping to make the application and limitations of the academic stuff so much clearer. We know this from our own experience, and from that of our students. Liz and I also conducted a piece of research on this with Rachel, one of our lovely student research assistant volunteers (Barton, Bates, & O’Donovan, 2019). You can find this report here. 

If you would like to get involved, it is easy to search online for local opportunities in areas that interest you (wherever you are in the country) on do-it.org

This week, Cumbria CVS is holding volunteering fairs in Carlisle, Kendal and Whitehaven, where lots of organisations come along to talk to people about their organisation and the roles they have available. These are friendly events and everyone is welcome to pop in, get some information, have a chat and ask any questions they might have. If you’re around and interested, do go along. The dates and times are as follows:

Carlisle Volunteering Fair – Tuesday 4 June 2019, 12-1.30pm, Shaddongate Resource Centre, Shaddongate, Carlisle, CA2 5TY

South Lakes Volunteering Fair – Wednesday 5 June 2019, 12-1.30pm, Kendal Town Hall, 9a Lowther St, Kendal, LA9 4DL

West Cumbria Volunteering Fair – Thursday 6 June 2019, 12noon-4.00pm, The Solway Hall, Lowther Street, Whitehaven, CA28 7SH

Barton, E., Bates, E. A., and O'Donovan, R. (2019). ‘That extra sparkle’: students’ experiences of volunteering and the impact on satisfaction and employability in higher education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(4), 453-466.