Connect<>Lockleaze to attend NIACE free event on Community Learning and Volunteering

Jo Earl, Connect <> Lockleaze Co-ordinator at UWE, will be attending the NIACE Community Learning and Volunteering event in Birmingham on 25th June 2013.

It looks like a great event and hopefully we can learn from the Community Learning Trust pilots and other innovative practice...
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Background
Volunteering is poised to become part of the community learning mainstream. The current policy drive to expand the role of volunteering in community learning reflects increased recognition of the valuable role that volunteers can play. Established initiatives such as Community Learning Champions, Union Learning Representatives and Workplace Learning Advocates have shown the diverse ways in which volunteers in communities and unionised and non-unionised workplaces respectively can enhance the work of providers and bring benefits for learners. Across sectors as diverse as health, offender resettlement, community development and financial advice, numerous volunteers linked to voluntary and community organisations support learning, often as part of a wider role. And for many of the Community Learning Trust pilots, developing volunteers has been an important dimension of their innovative partnership approaches.

Volunteering has a critical place within the community learning reform agenda. Greater involvement of volunteers in the planning and delivery of learning is a key way in which providers can both strengthen their work locally and ensure that it aligns with national policy objectives for community learning. It can help to achieve better outcomes for learners, communities, partner organisations and strategic stakeholders. On the one hand, volunteers can act as a bridge between providers and their communities, helping to engage communities in consultation and decision making so that provision is genuinely determined by local needs. On the other, they can inspire and support excluded adults to re-engage in learning, succeed and progress, and the additional resources that providers secure in the form of volunteers’ time, skills, knowledge and experience represents an important dimension of “Pound Plus”, that is the added financial value in cash or in kind that accrues around the core of public funding.

Drawing on the lessons and experiences of both established and emerging initiatives, and including contributions from volunteers themselves, this workshop will support community learning providers and partners to understand how to make the most of the opportunities presented for their own work.

Aims
The workshop aims to support community learning providers to develop and embed effective approaches to involving volunteers in their work. It will:

• share lessons from the Community Learning Trust pilots and other national and local initiatives on effective approaches to strengthening the relationship between community learning and volunteering;
• identify the key strategic and operational factors for successfully developing and embedding volunteering within community learning;
• show how community learning volunteers can play a vital role in helping to deliver local strategic priorities in areas such as health and wellbeing;
• explore how a focus on volunteering opens up the potential for building closer partnerships with voluntary and community sector organisations and widening the provider base for community learning;
• identify the lessons for community learning providers from peer volunteering initiatives in other sectors, and explore the scope for building closer relationships with these;
• share innovative approaches to capturing and demonstrating the impact and value of volunteering;
• hear directly from volunteers about their experiences and the difference their role has made.

Outcomes
The workshop will:

• raise awareness among providers of the potential role and contribution of volunteers within community learning;
• strengthen the role of volunteers within community learning, by promoting adoption of a robust and effective model for supporting their work;
• develop closer links between peer volunteer initiatives with an interest in learning;
• contribute to the further development of work to capture and demonstrate the impact of volunteering.

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Can't wait to hear Jo feedback what she learns!