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.
1. Introduction
1.3. Who is the course for?
This course is for individuals who support volunteers, specifically those with a member of staff or leader who organises or manages a volunteer programme. While it is aimed at paid staff and reflects the spirit of volunteer management, it also draws on ideas from community engagement and less formal contexts. Therefore, we feel that this course will be useful to a broad range of people, from volunteers who support other volunteers, to community workers who involve community members, to paid volunteer practitioners. It is related most closely to the Scottish context. Still the overarching principles can be applied to the rest of the UK and the international community, in conjunction with your local and national governments most up to date policy and advice.