08 Jun #volunteersweek 2016 – the national initiative run by NCVO

We’d like to give a shout out to all our charity partners and especially the thousands of volunteers who help them every single day. Why? The start of June heralds Volunteers’ Week, the national initiative run by NCVO in partnership with Volunteer Development Scotland, Volunteer Now (Northern Ireland) and Wales Council for Voluntary Action.

Volunteers’ Week is essentially that – a national celebration of volunteers and volunteering. It acknowledges the vital role that the UK’s millions of volunteers play in ensuring that charities and volunteer organisations are able to function properly (if at all). As you can imagine, the list of events being held throughout this twelve day period are numerous. One look at the Google map of Volunteers’ Week activities quickly becomes a sea of red pins!

With so many events and celebrations taking place, it’s difficult to single out any one particular charity. However, we’d like to give a heads up to one of our most respected charity Will-writing partners, Action for Children. As part of Volunteers’ Week, Action for Children have been championing their marathon initiatives.

Marathons are a key part of many charities’ fundraising efforts and Action for Children are no different. In 2015, their runners raised £125,000 and collectively ran over 2,000 miles. That works out at £63 a mile raised by every participant!

During Volunteers’ Week, Action for Children have been highlighting that marathons are open to all and have listed five key reasons for participating:

• Getting fit
• To raise money for a good cause
• For the sense of achievement
• To make new friends
• To inspire others

If running the London marathon (probably the most famous marathon in the world outside the Olympics) takes your fancy, Action for Children have an email address for interested participants to join their team: london.marathon@actionforchildren.org.uk

Finally we’d like to leave you with a tweet we read this morning by MS Society, another Will-writing partner of ours who have 5,500 volunteers assisting them: ‘Volunteers do not necessarily have the time, they just have the heart‘.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.