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Tag: Youth

International Youth Day 2020

On 12th August 2020

International Youth Day (IYD) is a time to celebrate young people and their contributions to the world. In 1999, the UN General Assembly marked August 12th as International Youth Day. It serves as an ‘opportunity to celebrate and mainstream young people’s voices, actions and initiatives.’

Each year, the United Nation of Youth create a theme for IYD. This year is: Youth Engagement for Global Action. This theme seeks to highlight how young people are engaging at local, national and global levels enrich themselves, institutions and processes.

Youth Engagement to You

So, Youth Engagement for Global Action… what does this mean to you?

As a young person myself, this statement is important. Allowing young voices and opinions to be heard is crucial to making changes at all levels.

Whilst the world is stuck in a limbo-like situation, local, national and global action is needed to find new ways we can overcome this period. Change is needed now more than ever – having young voices at the forefront allows for fresh input into processes being made. Therefore ultimately paving the way for themselves and future generations.

However, youth engagement to you may mean youth volunteering. This kind of engagement will be important to you and your organisation as it allows for fresh, new input. Giving your youth volunteers the chance to voice their opinions may help improve your future volunteering opportunities.

Youth Statistics in Volunteering

Let’s take a look at some youth stats…

35% of 16-25 year olds volunteer once a year with young women more likely to volunteer than young men.

Education plays a vital part in getting young people to engage. 69% of 10 – 20 year olds get involved with volunteering through their school, college or university. With this, a survey found almost all of youth volunteers reported these opportunities had benefited them in some way.

1.6 million people volunteer abroad yearly, with an astonishing 84% of millennials also saying they would travel abroad to participate in volunteering activities.

NfpSynergy recently posted a blog explaining how youths may be replacing the older generation as the key volunteering group. This interesting read explains how during the pandemic, volunteering roles relied on youth volunteering as the older generation fell into the ‘at risk’ category.

Time to Engage

With the pandemic clearly showing an increase in youth volunteering, I’m sure you are wondering how you can start to engage this generation and use their ideas to help your organisation.

How Can You Really Engage The Youth Of Today? This blog is a must read to help you and your organisation encourage young people join your volunteering opportunities.

TeamKinetic is here to help as our research shows our software is extremely effective at recruiting younger volunteers. This could be down to our digital tools that let you share to social media or the fact the younger generation prefer that digital approach.

You can trial our software for FREE to see how TeamKinetic can help you. Just head over to our website to learn more or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for more tips and information about volunteers.

International Youth Day allows us to celebrate all young people and their hard work, whether it be on a local, national or global level. Join us today in saying thank you to all of the young people in our lives!

THANK YOU!

International Friendship Day

By Chris Martin

On 30th July 2020

In Events and Conferences

Happy International Friendship Day! A day to reflect and appreciate the friends you have. But this is also a day to create new friendships, and a great way to achieve this is through volunteering. But as a volunteer manager, how can you help your volunteers create friendships?

Research shows that one of the most common motivations for volunteers is the desire to meet new people and to make new friends. Volunteering can strengthen ties to communities and expose people to others with common interests; making creating new friends easier than ever.

Similarly, 70% of employees say friends at work is the most crucial element to a happy working life. Whether your work is paid, or unpaid, it is proven that you are likely to perform better when working with friends. Research also shows that 50% of employees with a friend at work feel a stronger connection with their company. This makes your organisation better and stronger.

Therefore, for volunteer managers, it is suggested that your volunteers are working in a friendly environment where they have the opportunity to make friends. If your volunteers become friends, that helps volunteer retention and therefore creates a stronger volunteer workforce for your organisation.

My Volunteering Experiences…

Here I am, in my two most favorite volunteering experiences (i’m the one with short blonde hair). This was where I volunteered for Once Upon a Smile at a bucket collection, and created a fundraising event for the RNLI.

My volunteering journey only started last year, during my second year studying Events Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. We would always receive emails about new volunteering opportunities that could help us engage further with the course.

I was extremely nervous to start volunteering as I can be quite a shy person. Despite this, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and start volunteering. I only started to volunteer so I could start making industry contacts and gain experience. Over time it then became so much easier to make friends when volunteering! This was from developing upon my social skills from meeting people with similar interests. Never did I think it would lead to some of the amazing friendships I have since made.

Volunteering allowed me to meet many students from my course who I had previously never spoken to (we had a VERY big class). This made the experience even better as I was able to engage with other people from my course who I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. These people later ended up becoming some of my best friends at university.

From my personal experiences, I can definitely say my volunteering experiences were improved by making friendships. It made volunteering even more enjoyable and made so many volunteers happier to know they are working with their friends. Having friendships made me feel connected with the company I was volunteering for, making me feel more confident within my roles.

So What Could Volunteer Managers Do – and How Can We Help?

We all know it is standard practice for volunteer managers to introduce volunteers to one another before their duties begin. This allows volunteers to get a sense of who they are working with before moving on to starting their duties. Similarly, you may also want to consider using a platform where your volunteers can communicate. This then gives volunteers the opportunity to communicate with people they have met during an opportunity, allowing friendships to flourish.

You might now be thinking, what could we possibly do to help? With TeamKinetic, volunteers can use the chat room function to talk (or ask questions) to their friends from the same opportunities. This encourages communication between volunteers and increases the likelihood of volunteers signing up to the same opportunities together. As a result, this feature of communication therefore allows the creation of those vital, long-lasting friendships through one easy to use system. Volunteers can also share opportunities to other volunteers through TeamKinetic. This feature is then further increasing the likelihood of friendships between volunteers being made within your organisation.

Also, did I mention it is FREE?! If you now want to find a system that allows you to manage your volunteers effectively whilst also helping volunteers create those vital friendship, you can simply start a FREE trial today! For more information and to start your FREE trial today, visit our website or call 01619145747.

How Can You Really Engage The Youth of Today?

By Alex Evans

On 8th July 2020

In News & Views, Volunteer Management

Can you afford to miss out on the enthusiasm and energy of the youth today? Although, this isn’t a one-way street, many teenagers and younger adults need volunteering experience to help them with future employment to broaden their social networks and develop key life skills. Volunteering in youth boosts academic achievements, health and well-being and teens who participate in an organization that strives to make a difference are more likely to say they will attend higher education.

Despite the many benefits volunteering can clearly have on our young people, organisations still struggle to engage this audience. But hopefully, after reading this you might be able to capture some of that enthusiasm and energy for your organisation!

Be a Known Presence

Visibility for any organisation is always going to be a contributing factor for success, no matter how big or small your organisation is. So, getting on the radar of teens and young adults can help increase your reputation and volunteer numbers. Here are a few ways you can do this…

Attending or hosting events in further and higher education facilities will certainly heighten your visibility and will help get you talking to this youth demographic. Many universities have events and partnerships with 3rd sector and community businesses. For example, some universities will have connections with their city councils to help find students volunteering roles.
Connect with social media managers at colleges and universities, as most universities have a large social following of past and present students, any posts on their socials are sure to get a loud response.
Getting current young volunteers to post their experiences with the organisation to help increase awareness. Using personalised hashtags (#) with your organisation’s name will help increase your popularity amongst the youth.
Be prepared, post your opportunities well in advance. Post on to local volunteering sites, and with colleges and universities. Try to find where your audience’s presence is.
Be sure to state teenagers and young adults are welcome, they tend to like that!

Speak The Language of The Enigma

Don’t worry, we’re not going to be teaching you youth slang, ‘WYD’ and ‘LOL’ are firmly not on today’s agenda. However, social media is a major form of entertainment for young and old with ‘almost 4.57 billion active users globally in April 2020′. That’s ‘9 out of 10 teenagers aged 13-17 [who] use social media platforms’.

Social media is a huge way to keep in contact with this generation, here’s how…

Most young people, including myself, would much prefer to do everything via our phones, book a table, book tickets and sign up for volunteering roles. Giving teens this opportunity will increase your amount of volunteers.
Reaching out on social media is one of the best ways to interact with teens. With Facebook being the highest used platform with 77.3% of 15 – 25-year-olds using it, to Twitter being the least-used platform with 48.6% using it. Create your social media pages on the most popular sites so you can reach out to the youth of today.
Know your audience. Create events and opportunities specifically designed for teens and young adults. Having a role which is attractive to the younger crowd will give you that boost in numbers you need.

Stay Engaging

Getting the youth market to fixate on something is tricky. Most young people tend to lose interest when something becomes well… boring. So engaging is essential and can help retain younger volunteers and recruit new ones. Take a look below at ways you can do this.

Give young people a voice. Allow younger volunteers to be a part of the team when planning. This will help give your organisation a better insight into the mindset of your younger volunteers.
Teens and young adults tend to prefer working more creatively, so motivate them, let them develop new ideas and be supportive of the things they want to try. Always encourage, be open and create an environment where their ideas are respected.
Make events and opportunities fun! It’s simple. You could include music, time to socialise, creative activities and the chance to work with friends. Use your existing youth volunteers and imagination to help make your event or opportunity more fun.
Sell your opportunity or event as interesting and exciting. Gloss it up a little, identify key roles and outline the responsibilities that the volunteers will have and how it may help that volunteer develop that all-important experience they desire.

Pulling Down The Barriers

Finding time to get to know your volunteers can be tricky especially when you have a million and one other things to do. getting to know your younger volunteers might seem a bit tricky, working out how you can relate, but here are some simple ideas you could try.

Get to know your volunteers. You can do this by saving 10 minutes to talk to one or two volunteers. Get to know what they like and don’t like, what interests them, and why they are there.
Communication is key. Be available and be welcoming.
Update and make yourself a known social presence. Create a mailing list of youth volunteers who might want to be emailed, and send out a weekly email or blog sharing stories of success and great efforts.

How TeamKinetic Can Help You!

So, I can only assume you are wondering how on earth you will be able to do all of this and still manage ALL other volunteers. Well, TeamKinetic is here to help. With TeamKinetic you will be able to manage all of your volunteers in one convenient space, giving you more time to focus on promoting to new volunteers.

You can also:

Create and manage opportunities
Send bulk emails to certain groups
Gain unlimited volunteer registration (no cap)
Internal email communications
Volunteer opportunity feedback
DBS checks
Reward and recognise your volunteers

The software gives your volunteers the chance to sign up online to volunteer roles, log their own hours and leave feedback. They can also then post via socials the volunteering they have done which will attract more volunteers.

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