Time...a gift that keeps on giving.

A busy time of year, isn't it?! What with decorating the home in seasonal cheeriness, buying gifts and preparing for family get-togethers, you can feel a bit 'spent' when it comes to giving and even more so if it's your time that's needed. And so... a couple of tales to cheer any flagging spirits...

Willow Burn Hospice paid tribute at our volunteer lunch recently to  staff  volunteers from the Business School who gave up a day of their time to sort, price and put tickets on goods that had been donated to the Hospice (clothes, books and toys) for two fundraising fayres that the Hospice had organised. Willow Burn Hospice is a small unit in Maiden Law, Lanchester which, for the last 23 years,  has been supporting patients and their families who are suffering from life limiting illness. They offer an in-patient unit and have a number of outpatient and community services available including day hospice, symptom management clinics, holistic therapies and family bereavement counselling and support.  

Staff from the Business School spent a day in not-so-luxurious surroundings at the Hospice warehouse packing tombola prizes and cataloguing event equipment. But seemingly small gifts of time can have a huge impact; because the goods had been cleaned, marked up and sorted properly the Hospice found that the takings at both fayres were up by over 50% on previous years. As well as completing a task that would have taken workers from the Hospice over a week to get through, the fayres brought in a contribution of £11,500 towards the running costs of the Hospice...which in real terms paid for a week's services for  terminally ill clients. Buying more quality time for these clients is perhaps the greatest gift the staff could possibly have given.   A huge thank you to the Business School teams for their hard work, enthusiasm and, most of all, their sense of fun!

Staff volunteers aross the board have been extremely busy and have clocked up an extraordinary number of hours taking part in events, activities and local good causes. Avril Brown, leading a team of volunteers from Queen's Campus, adopted the Cyrenians as their favoured charity after working on  a garden allotment for the charity as part of a team challenge in the summer.  The team just thought it would be a nice idea to get some gifts for the client residents  - formerly homeless young men living in hostel accommodation or in supported  tenancies. The worker at the Cyrenians mentioned that a lot of the clients have children and explained how difficult it was for them to get funds together to buy gifts and how they worried about spending time with them. Back at Queen’s Campus, Avril sent out a call-to-arms and an email  went out to all Admin Network members to pass on to their colleagues asking for donations of gifts and clothes for the men and for their children.

Staff  from all different departments and disciplines at Queen's Campus were extremely generous donating gifts of scarfs, aftershave clothes and games for the men and all sorts of toys for their children. Another email went out asking for more  for cash donations to buy gifts  and a couple of the volunteer team  members targeted local stores – Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys etc. to see if they could encourage them to contribute. Avril organised a  team  to wrap and stick bows on the gifts, labelling the children’s gifts with contents/ages etc.The team managed to collect nearly 100 gifts for the guys at the Cyrenians and delivered them along with a Christmas tree to the Cyrenians' hostel at Plawsworth.  Tesco also very kindly donated £60 worth of gifts too – so hopefully Christmas will be a bit more special for them all this year. The Cyrenians' staff and client residents were absolutely delighted with the gifts; they can now experience the pleasure of spending time with their children and watching them open gifts – something a lot of them did not think was possible this year. Thank you Avril and your wonderful team!

If you'd like to get in touch next year about getting involved in your local community, drop us a line at community.engagement@durham.ac.uk  or give us a call on 0191 334 2199.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the team from Staff Volunteering and Outreach.

Beating the back-to-school blues!

As we gallop headlong towards the new academic year, it feels like it’s already time to schedule in a little breathing space out and about in the community. Here at SVO land we’ve been recruiting a new team member, rounding up challenge events and smartening up our procedures for our Investing in Volunteers accreditation.

Feedback from the assessment has been very useful…we will be introducing some sort of volunteering insignia-type-thing for those digging holes in public places after the ladies from the business School found themselves being hollered at by white van man to “get a proper job.” We’ll ensure too that there isn’t a hint of orange overall as aforementioned ladies were also assumed to be working out their community service. Mind you…

And thanks to the volunteers who took part in the IiV assessment interviews; not a hint of snarkiness to be found which proved to the assessor that our SVO scheme was doing rather well. Either that or we’d bribed everyone but it’s pretty clear we just don’t have the sort of cash to fork out for a lot of sherry and buns.

It’s that time of year too when some parents may feel a little bushier-tailed, a little lighter in the step. For others with little people heading off to school for the first time and who are perhaps feeling a little tearful that their beloved poppet (wearing an oversized uniform that’s only really going to look good for two days max) is striding out to conquer the world or maybe just Primary 1, we’ve been arranging a few distractions for you.

For those that are feeling relieved that they’ve survived 6 weeks of pass-the-parcel childcare, teenager angst or bank-busting distractions/activities/bribes for their little treasures, your alternative therapies have been arranged.

And for those of you who have a life…

Volunteering often conjures up images of cardigan-clad senior citizens staffing the local charity shop with the level of financial acumen that would put the banking establishment to shame…and for those of you interested in pursuing such activities we can in fact place you at appropriate venues.

In reality though, it’s more often about lending a helping hand; it’s much more practical, pragmatic and direct. A team from Biomedical Sciences found out at the start of the summer that their morning spent fixing up the garden of a person that had previously been homeless and who had enduring mental health issues, was in fact life-changing when the tenant attempted to engage with and really enjoy the company of other people - a first for him in a long time.

To get a flavour of the work we’ve been involved in, the first edition of our newsletter is out and available online at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/volunteer/volunteers/factsheet/

For more information about opportunities, charities and events, drop us a line at: community.engagement@ durham.ac.uk 

 Laters!

Ah, summertime, when a young man's fancy turns to.....

...constructing an otter halt  (that's a house where otters live, dontcha know) or even building a butterfly garden...which is obviously a garden to attract butterflies rather than a butterfly's garden...

Actually as far as staff volunteering goes you don't even have to be a  man -young or otherwise -  to have a fancy!  All you need to do is ask and we'll see what we can arrange - obviously within the realms of volunteering, that is.   We've already quite a few challenges arranged for over the summer months that might suit.

And so far it seems our wonderful staff volunteers are willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved with just about anything the community can throw at them. Since October last year, staff members from various departments across the university have been involved in 15 challenge events in the community ranging from digging allotments and tree-lopping to painting a shelter for homeless people or making up promotional material for a charity that works to prevent teenage suicides. So far, these fabulous people have clocked up over 315 volunteering hours (that's 45 days!) helping out local good causes. Gives you goosebumps just thinking about it!

But let's not forget our other volunteers who regularly give their time to support very worthy causes. We've gathered a few personal stories together to show the range of activities that people take part in: http://www.dur.ac.uk/volunteer/volunteers/studies/

So, if you want to start volunteering and you know what you want (what you really really want), just holler and we'll see what we can arrange for you. Or  if you're looking to just dip your toe into volunteering, then why not round up a few chums and we'll tailor a challenge to suit.

C'mon in - the water's lovely!

Blogs away!

Welcome to the first blog from the Durham University Staff Volunteering team., where along the way we hope to be sharing our thoughts and stories about some of the wonderful and (let's face it) quite weird volunteering tasks that our staff members have got themselves into (if you're 'channeling' Laurel and Hardy right now, you're on the right track!)

We now have over 370 staff members taking part in all sorts of worthy causes, practical tasks and interesting opportunities. Just this week, we've increased our numbers to include staff members interested in taking part in environmental challenges over the summer with Durham Wildlife and the Countryside Agency.

One of the funniest tasks this week though was, without doubt, the wonderful ITS team who very kindly donated their time to make up craft packs for a local toddler group. The toddler group, based in Bournmour, was desperate for help to have someone put together a few craft ideas with templates and ready-to-glue- together shapes for a group of 20 pre-school children, for their art projects throughout the year. Putting them together can take up valuable time and resources for small groups, so having staff members volunteer their time to make them up was seized upon very quickly!

Armed with designs courtesy of our Volunteer Broker (and resident craft/handy person), the ITS team of 10 set about cutting out the templates for Peppa Pigs, Olly Octopuses, kites and Freddy Frogs. A couple of squabbles broke out - mainly among the men - about how long octopus legs should be, who had cut out the most puppets and who had the sharpest scissors.

But amidst the tinsel, glitter, crepe shapes and pom poms, the templates really took shape! Twenty packs of every design were produced in a lunch break - that's 160 octopus tentacles!

And, in context, the team volunteered over 10 hours of their time, over their lunch, to provide some very much needed support to a local group that delivers valuable childcare services to local families.

And of course, all you parents will instantly know about the time rule about these ...er lovely...objets d'arts: 1 week on the  kitchen table, 1 week hanging off the fridge and 2 years in the loft before you can fully dispose of them with a clear conscience. So, when little Johnny or Jilly runs home with a claggy, grubby mishapen octopus that would (if representative of the live creature) be probably just swimming in circles due to the disproportionate tentacle length, think on....it might have been designed at Durham University: by an ITS boffin or a doctor of very hards sums, no less...