Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Volunteering Matters!
We're counting the sleeps until our favourite time of year: National Volunteering Week!
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Celebrate volunteers 19-25th May!
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Each year across Ireland, National Volunteering Week includes a range of events, stories and videos that showcase all that is great about volunteering. The theme for National Volunteering Week 2025 is Building Community Together!
This theme gives us a chance to feature the social opportunity that volunteering offers. Outside of home and work, volunteering is the ‘third space’ for many people where they connect, empathise, laugh and nurture.
We all know the impact of volunteering in our communities as volunteers provide care, comfort and joy for people. However, for so many volunteers, the service to others is merely an added bonus! Volunteering is a way of socialising, making friends, and learning about new people. Volunteering keeps people connected to their communities and gives them an outlet for the deep care they have for others.
National Volunteering Week is brought to you by the Irish League of Credit Unions and Healthy Ireland. Thank you!
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Give a volunteer a shout out on social media!
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There are so many ways to show your appreciation for all the hard work of volunteers in your life! Sharing stories of volunteers on social media can be an easy and free way to celebrate the amazing volunteering that is happening in your community. Here are some tips:
- Be honest! There's something really loveable about learning that your best volunteer started on their journey afraid to come in...only to realise they love volunteering. Let people tell their stories as they really happened.
- Volunteers are often humble about what they do--don't let them undersell just how important they are.
- Talk to everyone! The story of a brand new volunteer might be just as exciting as your long time veteran.
- This can also inspire people who might be curious about a different or unique role that you offer.
- A picture is worth a thousand words! Use a picture of your volunteer to create visual interest and to help humanise your story.
- There are loads of Canva tutorials on YouTube if you want to get fancy with this and Volunteer Ireland has a template you can use below.
- Use the hashtag! Tagging Volunteer Ireland and using #NVWIreland connects your post with the national campaign.
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What does the future of volunteering look like?
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The aim of this workshop is to facilitate discussion around key messages and actions that need to be in place to recognize, enable and finance volunteering. The key issues we want to explore are what changes are required to support volunteering and increase volunteering’s impact; and who is responsible for making this change happen.
Insights from these workshops will be used to inform a Global Call to Action for the Future of Volunteering to be developed later this year and launched as part of the 2026 International Volunteer Year (IVY 2026).
This will be an interactive workshop focused on one key question - considering the realities in your own context, what needs to change to better recognize and support volunteering and who has responsibility for making this change happen?
You can also contribute your opinions through a global survey.
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