Join our team with the feelgood factor
27 Apr 2020
Grab a cuppa and celebrate with Nancy and our University community at the online Volunteer of the Year Awards
Working with volunteer projects overseas that were cancelled as the COVID19 coronavirus spread early this year, our Student Development team realised that our Volunteer of the Year Awards might suffer the same fate.
So they quickly organised an online version – to which we’re all invited!
“There was never any sense of not doing anything, more a case of working out what we could do,” explains Lindsay Gilbert, Volunteering and Community Engagement Manager.
“I’m incredibly lucky to work in a team that has such a feel-good factor in helping people to make a difference to their communities and, even after the 11 years of the awards, I’m always humbled by the difference people make to the lives of others for no reward other than the satisfaction of helping someone else.
“When we are hearing very little but bad news, it really helps to keep perspective.”
Nancy will introduce the awards – on the @UoMVolunteering Facebook page at 1pm on Thursday, 7 May – with a speech, while other senior leaders will “make a brew and sit and watch the ceremony”. As usual, it will feature moving and inspiring films about the winners, this time in that inimitable Zoom style.
Lindsay adds: “We had a record number of entries this year! As always the judging panels, which met before the lockdown, were blown away with what some people are able to contribute alongside their studies or work.
“The Volunteer of the Year Awards is a really important event in our annual calendar, recognising some outstanding individuals who truly go above and beyond and it’s an event that a lot of people enjoy attending as it has a real feel-good factor.
“Furthermore, volunteering is really important at the moment as so many people are supporting their communities. Whilst it was too late to include those individuals in the nominations, it felt doubly important to recognise volunteering at a time when community action is so vital.”
But that’s not all they’ve done.
The team has been working closely with community partners who need more help due to the current situation, such as foodbanks. They’ve also supported students who have their own ideas for projects, such as sewing scrubs and coordinating fellow students to provide support to NHS workers, and helped students to think about how they can volunteer creatively, sourcing all sorts of opportunities that can be undertaken remotely from their own sofa.
Come along
All colleagues are free to come along to the Volunteer of the Year Awards at 1pm on Thursday, 7 May. You don’t need to be on Facebook, you can simply visit:
The overall winners in each individual category will also receive the University's Distinguished Achievement Medal for Social Responsibility, designed to recognise the important contribution that student, staff and alumni volunteers make to the University's strategic ambitions around the social responsibility agenda.
For further information, visit: