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.