Volunteers’ Week: Thank You!

by The Mix Staff

Monday 2nd June 2014

YouthNet’s volunteers offer their time, energy and brains to so many different and challenging roles within YouthNet – without our volunteers we couldn’t reach and support as many young people as we do.

We ask a lot of our volunteers and they never fail to deliver. One week, they could be running an online live chat session giving advice and support to other young people – the next, asked to pitch their ideas to senior members of YouthNet and O2 – the next, responding to a bespoke relationship question.

With our opportunities ranging from app co-creation to relationship advice and support, our volunteers are versatile and unique. Some complete all their volunteering and training online from home, such as our roving photographers, which means we can recruit and involve young people from across the UK.

YouthNet offer a variety of different volunteering  roles. These are sometimes medium term projects, with a commitment of up to six months, like our Employability Project Group volunteers and our Relationship Advisors (we have a couple of blogs from our Relationship Advisors coming up later this week).  Some are longer term ongoing commitments, such as our Live Chat and Board Moderator roles. Alongside our roles we offer online training and accreditation options, supporting our volunteers to develop and gain skills.

We currently involve over 200 volunteers from across the UK. Our volunteers, like the people we support, are mostly aged 16-25 and without them we wouldn’t be able to offer the peer support that is so vital. Without our volunteers we wouldn’t understand young people like we do, or create the products and content that we do. Without our volunteers our services wouldn’t matter to as many young people as they currently do.

Volunteers Week is about celebrating and recognising the contribution of our volunteers. At YouthNet we aim to do that every day, but want to take this opportunity to say thank you and give them the public recognition and thanks that they deserve.

If you’re interested in volunteering with us, take a look at our current opportunities or get in touch via [email protected]