Voluntary Centre Services West Lindsey has continued to provide support and advice, both to community groups and volunteers throughout the lockdown period.
Working from home, their small team have supported prospective volunteers to offer their time with mutual aid groups, as well as connecting participants from their social prescribing programme to some of those initiatives designed to help more vulnerable people. They have even supported new groups to emerge and work towards sustainable approaches to continue their activities going forward.
They have hosted two highly successful digital voluntary sector networking events via Microsoft Teams and the recordings of these are available on their Facebook page, www.facebook.com/vcswestlindsey. Also on Facebook is their group ‘Volunteering in Lincolnshire’, which is a great place both to share and find volunteering roles within the county and where they celebrated a socially-distanced Volunteers’ Week (1st to 7th June) to highlight the invaluable output from volunteers during the coronavirus crisis.
At the time of writing we remain largely in lockdown and the Voluntary Centre Services offices remain closed, though plans are being devised for not only for how they might resume some of their face-to-face activities, but how they might continue to reach a broader section of the community through continued online activities. They know that for some of the smallest community groups, the future may be even more difficult than the present and they are keen to support those groups as much as possible through identifying funding, offering governance advice, providing peer mentoring and sharing best practice in order to allow such essential services to continue to thrive.
Voluntary Centre Services is keen to hear from you on 01427 613470 or westlindsey@voluntarycentreservices.org.uk.