Here's a brief summary of things that happened to Help From Home during the merry month of July:
- Received an invitation to participate in a survey from Richard Branson's Virgin Unite, as they want to provide volunteering opps to their 50,000 employees worldwide as well as for their customers. They were interested in trad and micro opps. I was quite chuffed to take part in it, only because of the calibre of the 40 or so other organisations invited to participate from around the world. HFH was included in amongst the big boys like United Nations, Volunteering England and the like - dead chuffed I woz! The bottom line is that they may or may not contact me to supply them with micro opps to whatever database they choose to pursue. Be MEGA exciting if they did!
- Been a month on vinspired.com's (UK national volunteering for 16 - 25s) database and as far as I can see HFH is one the most popular volunteering opps on their database. Whoopee!
- Volunteer Scotland promoted Help From Home and micro volunteering in their July eBulltein. Got some encouraging emails from three Volunteer Centres but nothing to write home about.
- Tried for a second time to get Do-it.org (UK national volunteering database) to accept micro volunteering as a legit form of volunteering as I had endorsements from a few key personell in the volunteering sector, which I hoped might sway their decision. For a second time they refused. However, all is not lost as Wessex Community Action (a high street Volunteer Centre) contacted me out of the blue to put some micro opps on to their database, as apparently they’ve had quite a few ‘customers’ enquiring about home based volunteering. Wessex Community Actions database feed into Do-it.org so I just might get onto Do-it.org via the back door anyway, so to speak. Watch this space!
- Was contacted out of the blue by Rob Johnson, one of the Directors of Volunteering England, inviting me to collaborate with a start up venture called Voluntr. It wants to connect people to volunteering via Facebook - nothing new there then, but it's the way they are doing it which is different. Had a chat with them all the way from Spain and initially they were just scouting for info, but who knows, something may come out of it. Anyway, it was nice of the VE Director to bear me in mind for a potential volunteering start up venture. Watch this space!
- Conducted my first ever leaflet drop to 10,000 homes in Cardiff, UK. Wot a disappointment that was, with hardly any rise in visits to the website. Ho hum!
