Keeping Volunteers Safe: Restarting your Volunteer Programme
This course is about the essential things you need to consider to ensure a positive experience for individuals returning to engage in volunteering following suspension of programmes in response to Covid-19. The overall aim is to help you prepare your volunteers, organisation and colleagues to return to supporting volunteer involvement in your work. It was developed with input from volunteers, volunteer-involving groups and organisations, volunteer practitioners and trainers. This input has given us the volunteers’ perspective and the volunteers’ ‘voice’ that we hope you will find helpful throughout the course.
4. Adapting to Change: Roles and Responsibilities
Figure 8: Diverse Hands (Public Domain)
The previous section highlighted that volunteering is a choice, and people choose to volunteer for different reasons. In the course “Involving Volunteers,” we emphasised the idea that choices ought to be real, and that choice is informed by openness and transparency. Being open and transparent is not easy when things are changing quickly. Rather than focus directly on the changes this section shares questions and concerns about how to adapt to those changes and highlights areas to focus on:
The structures you might need to adapt or change to support the involvement of volunteers during the COVID 19 situation and recovery phases. This might include training and support, changes to leadership structures, reviews of formal guidance on safe working and volunteering practices, the opportunity to review progress and change as the situation evolves.
- Developing an awareness of the individual, collective and group or organisational responsibilities around health and safety, legislation and insurance and what action you must take before your programme restarts or scales up during the COVID-19 situation and recovery phases