Last Friday we travelled down to Birmingham for Volunteer Expo. If you haven’t seen our coverage on our socials- fear not! I’m here to give you a whistle stop tour of our experience, and what we can take from the day.

Volunteer Expo connects communities and brings together many sectors under one roof to celebrate what it is that unites us. Sitting in on talks from GB Paralympians and our friends at the Association of Volunteer Managers- volunteering was (and still is) the thing that brings us together the most.

The Power of Sport Volunteering:

We started the day on Friday listening to the first talk of the conference: The Power of Sport. Hosted by Steve Brown, GB Paralympian, he was joined on stage by Hannah Mills, Sam Barlow and Phil Smith. The talk focused on the power of sport in volunteering and what the focus is moving forward to better volunteering and the environment around it.

Hannah Mills spoke openly about her passion for the environment. She’s spearheaded many projects to raise awareness about the world we live in. She highlights the 2019 pledge ‘The Big Plastic Pledge’ aiming to eradicate single-use plastic used in sport. Alongside Hannah, we were introduced to Sam Barlow.

After losing her husband in 2020, Sam dedicated her BBC Personality of the Year Unsung Hero 2021 award to him. Sam founded Fitmums and Friends simply by accident. After the birth of her child, Sam decided to ask if any other mums wanted to go on a run- and run she did! Now with 15 groups across the UK, Sam has helped people get active and support one another.

Finally on the panel was Phil Smith. Executive Director for Partnerships at Sport England, Phil joined the panel to talk about how his focus is on creating a more inclusive environment for volunteering in sport.

The talk opened our eyes to the importance of volunteering in sport (and every sector) along with the understanding that it isn’t yet perfect. There’s a lot of work needed to do in every volunteering sector…

Vision for Volunteering:

After a sport focused talk, we joined many others in watching the launch of Vision for Volunteering. Introduced by our friend at AVM, Ruth Leonard, she outlined what the Vision for Volunteering is all about. As one of the five partner organisations for this vision- it’s all about empowering people to find solutions and make a difference within the community.

There are five threads of the launch focusing on: Awareness and Appreciation, Equity and Inclusion, Experimentation, Collaboration and Power. For each of these themes, Vision for Volunteering highlights their ambitions and what volunteering should like 10 years from now.

Ruth then introduced the #IWill movement, whose talk was eye opening to the future of volunteering and really got us thinking deeper about the future. Visions for Volunteering is a really exciting opportunity to make a positive difference to volunteering in the future.

An exciting day for all! 

Between talks, we managed to make our way around the stands and catch up with some of you! It was great to see so many familiar and new faces- along with seeing the launch of Vision for Volunteering live too.

It’s been some time since we’ve been in a room with so many people, and after grabbing a cheeky drink to cheer and say thank you to all volunteers we headed back up to Manchester. For those that may have attended on Saturday, let us know what you think!