Be Extraordinary

Came across an initiative the other day, which in my mind truly promotes the concept of micro volunteering. It’s called ‘The Extraordinaries’ and they are trying to encourage people to volunteer their time whilst for instance they are at the bus stop, on the tube, waiting for a pizza etc. It’s all done via a person’s mobile phone and they’re suggesting that the few minutes that people have spare through the day could be devoted to helping out worthy causes. Check them out. Quote extraordinary!

I hadn’t come across the term micro volunteering before until I’d came across the The Extraordinaries website and I now realise that this is what Help From Home is promoting. Talking about promoting Help From Home has been featured in quite a few blogs last month and is now starting to get Twittered.

I was interviewed by the Huffington Post internet newspaper for an article on volunteering last month. I must say that the reporter did a very good job of what seemed to me to be random ramblings coming out of my mouth. Top marks to her.

I’m trying to promote the concept of Home volunteering to volunteer bureaux as, from my research, they don’t seem to tackle this side of volunteering at all. To this end I had a meeting with my local volunteer centre in Cardiff, UK who agreed to include my website on their books. They advised me to contact the other volunteer centres around Wales, so that is what I am going to do. I’ve actually created a web page for managers of volunteer bureaux to read, so if you know of any do let them know about Help From Home.

As the site continues to grow, so the number of web pages I add to the site grows as well. In addition to the ‘Volunteer Bureaux’ page mentioned above, I’d added a FAQs page and on ‘In the media’ page. Hopefully you’ll check them out.

In order to provide different ways of promoting the concept of Home Volunteering, I’m aiming to produce ‘Do Good; cards rather like these ones here and a Volunteer Workout Plan. The Workout Plan will be based on a Fitness Workout Plan but with a twist. More details will follow once I’ve finalised the details.

On a final note, have a read of this article about some research that shows you are likely to live longer if you are doing something positive in your life like volunteering. Quite extraordinary!

'Til next time.

Here in the UK, its National Volunteer Week, where traditionally people get together in groups at a certain place and a certain time to perform activities that benefit others. Of course, volunteering can also be conducted in the comfort of people’s home, a concept that I believe is lost on many of the main volunteering portals website eg http://www.do-it.org/ In time, it’s my intention to approach them on this issue and urge them to provide a category for home based volunteering activities. Watch this space!

Whilst on the theme of National Volunteer Week, I created a petition to promote the concept of a National Volunteer at Home Day. As the focus of these volunteer weeks is on groups of people getting together, I thought what better time to start a petition to get people to think about volunteering their time at home. If you feel that this is an issue worth pursuing, then let others know by signing the petition. It’s going to be up and running for a whole year, so you’ve got plenty of time to put your name to it and to encourage others to support it.

Following on from last month’s blog request for volunteers, I’ve actually created a web page so that visitors to the site can see the direction in which I hope to expand Help From Home. Volunteers are required for creating a education/action pack for children/teachers; setting up home volunteer groups in their own community; producing a book centred around the home volunteering concept; creating a web widget for webmasters to add to their websites that show up randomly selected home volunteer opportunities on every page refresh. If you’re interested in any one of them, just pop over to the page ‘Make A Difference’ and see if you can help us.

Big ambitions eh! You bet, but there again the concept of volunteering your time at home is, I believe, not on people’s radar and for this reason, I feel there is huge scope in promoting the idea.

Til next time.