VAL has hosted our own Volunteering Website since 2017 as a targeted resource to promote local volunteering opportunities in Leicestershire and help connect organisations with potential volunteers. As the nationally accredited Volunteer Centre for Leicester and Leicestershire, we have created two previous versions of this platform that have both been used extensively by both organisations and people to help support our local communities of place and of interest.
In January 2025, we have moved to a new version of this website to help take VAL and volunteering across Leicester and Leicestershire forward in ever challenging times. We have had an interesting few years, with a number of challenges and opportunities arising here in Leicestershire. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a tremendous response to the call for volunteer support, with more than 2,500 people coming forward to offer support in March 2020, and then again another 2,500 people coming forward to offer time to support the vaccination sites across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. We continue to express our most sincere thanks to everyone who volunteered during this time for your support, positivity and willingness to get involved in a variety of different ways to meet the needs of our most vulnerable residents.
As we have moved forward, we have seen an overall reduction in volunteering enquiries and people actually going on to start volunteering, which reflects national trends we have observed with other Volunteer Centres in the East Midlands region, and more widely across the UK. In discussions with other Volunteer Centres we often talk about how ‘life happens’, and different situations can create barriers and obstacles that prevent people from volunteering in local communities, or even mean that they have to give up volunteering roles due to personal circumstances. What an interesting few years we have had recently! Unfortunately, this has meant that fewer people have been able to commit to volunteering with local charities, community groups and community projects.
We are committed to exploring new ways of working, looking into experimenting with different approaches to involving volunteers and supporting organisations to find the best way to recruit and retain volunteers. We have been working with a number of local organisations to review how they are working with volunteers and how they could bring in new people. At the same time, we have been talking to local people that are interested in volunteering to see how we might be able to help them to overcome barriers and challenges that could prevent them from volunteering.
What remains most important to us as the local Volunteer Centre for Leicester and Leicestershire is offering people choice and championing local causes. We all have diverse life experiences and different motivations for supporting certain causes or issues and there really is something out there for everyone to get involved in – it’s just finding the right thing for you at the right time to fit in with your other commitments.
This is why we’ve launched our new VAL Volunteering Website, to try to give people information, flexibility and options to consider. It has a bit of a different look and feel to the previous version of the website, but we have tried to make the application process as simple as possible for both volunteer and organisation. Volunteering really is a very personal experience, so you have to find the right pathway for your journey.
This updated platform offers a fresh, user-friendly experience, and we invite you to explore the wide range of opportunities available.
For organisations, we hope this website will be a tool to showcase your mission and the range of volunteering opportunities that people can get involved in to support your invaluable work to support our local communities.
For individuals, we have this website available as a tool to help you begin this journey and explore the choices available to you. We really hope you will all join us on this overall mission to champion volunteering across Leicester and Leicestershire by visiting our website: https://volunteer.valonline.org.uk/
