Volunteer Centres Ireland bid for EYV Flagship Project was Sucessful!
Volunteer Centres Ireland is delighted to announce that our bid for European Funding for the European Year of Volunteering flagship project has been successful. VCI’s application was made in partnership with three other organisations: Business in the Community Ireland, Focus Ireland and the National Standards Authority of Ireland to develop a national quality standard for involving volunteers.
The central objective of our proposal is to improve the quality of volunteering and we’re delighted the awarding body recognised the importance of that. We are also extremely excited to be working with BITC, Focus and NSAI on what we’re sure will be a fruitful project that will have a lasting and positive impact on volunteering in Ireland and a fantastic legacy for 2011 – the European Year of Volunteering.
As part of the project we will research, design, pilot and implement a quality standard framework for volunteer-involving organisations in Ireland appropriate to the community and voluntary sector here, which will be a model for other EU countries without an equivalent standard to learn from and adapt or adopt accordingly. The framework, incorporating policy, procedures and practices will serve as a benchmark for organisations to achieve best practice in involving volunteers and an award system to allow for public display of commitment to quality.
Our partners, Business In The Community and The National Standard Authority in Ireland will undertake the design of the quality framework, including the most appropriate and accessible format for volunteer-involving organisations to engage with it. It will be piloted in Focus Ireland, nother partner, and then it will be rolled out nationwide, providing a standard that we hope all not-profit volunteer-involving organisations in Ireland will aspire to achieve. The result will be more effective volunteer-involving organisations and a culture of best practice in volunteering in Ireland: a more enabling environment for volunteering!
