Volunteers’ Week

Today marks the start of volunteers’ week, a week dedicated to recognising the contributions that volunteering makes in our society. While around 14m people volunteer formally with organisations, the footprint of volunteering is much greater with the overwhelming majority of us volunteering informally at some point during the year.

Volunteering is a great way to help improve your local community, you can learn useful transferable skills, develop close friendships, and I’ve always found a lot of satisfaction to be gained in knowing you’ve helped to make a difference. It’s an important part of enabling society to function where the private and public sectors either choose not to engage or lack the resources to deploy.

While nominations have already closed for this year, Crawley Community Awards are a great way of recognising the efforts of those who have made an outstanding contribution through their voluntary work in one way or another.

If you are looking to do more to volunteer in Crawley, Crawley Community Action–who support local voluntary groups–is a great place to start. They are also running a ‘Thank You Fun Day’ for local volunteers tomorrow at Dormans Youth Centre for anyone who is already active. Simply email emily.thorpe@crawleycommunityaction.org to RSVP.