Chag Sameach, everyone. I have just come back to Britain from a week in Berlin. I have walked passed the Gestapo HQ; I visited the Wannasse House where the “Final Solution” was agreed in a 90 minute meeting; I walked on platform 17, the goods railway track at Grunewald Station,where most of Berlins Jews were taken to concentration […]

Matt Collins is a digital marketing consultant who runs http://www.charitychap.com. He can help charities use social media and online tools to achieve your organisation’s objectives cheaply and effectively.   Social Media is something of a misunderstood tool when it comes to marketing your company. Many people find the idea of blogging or tweeting to raise your company profile […]

I was recently at a friend’s party. I knew one person there – the hostess, who had invited me – and so I was duly forced to mingle with people I didn’t know. With everyone I met, I found myself asking the same familiar questions: “What’s your name?”, “Who do you know here?”, and the […]

JVN were honoured this week to be invited to the office of the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Brian Schama. A member of the Jewish community – he conducts no civic events on Shabbat and other festivals – the Mayor was eager to share his views on volunteering and the Jewish community in the London Borough […]

Volunteering for a particular cause or organisation is often a way of becoming extremely passionate about it. People can go to extreme lengths in terms of the time they dedicate and, in some circumstances, the risks they take to see their vision become a reality. In this blog, JVN Intern Elliot Cukier examines just how far […]

The passing of Baroness Thatcher last week marked, for many, the end of an era, but her legacy of ‘Thatcherism’ will live on in the actions of governments and the minds of the British public for decades, possibly centuries, to come. Love her or hate her, one cannot deny that she was the woman Prime […]

In 2009, David Cameron laid out, as an alternative to big government, his plan to create a Big Society. In May 2010, following the general election victory, these plans were given pride of place in the coalition’s Programme for Government. This vision has prevailed through the hard times and the language has become commonplace. Now, […]

This blog was originally posted by Andrea at SAM UK and when we saw this we thought we must share it with you all. As an organisation that has to be at the forefront of technology in order to provide the best service we can to all our charities and all our volunteers, we are strong […]

It’s that time again… All volunteers to the decks; well in most cases to the floors. Pesach is here… a wonderful mix of hard work, celebration and family networking!! This year together with my close family, I will decamp to Israel. Everything will be done on a plate this year, or is that Seder plate? […]

Leonie and I recently wrote an article entitled Who Want to Be a Volunteer?, printed in the 2013 Charity Matters supplement in the Jewish Chronicle a few weeks ago. In this article, volunteering in schools was identified as one of the two means of volunteering that has come to the fore in recent years (the […]

Leonie, JVN Director, has been a very busy bee this week! Aside from her regular jam-packed schedule of meetings, fundraising and replying to countless e-mails – not to mention the vast amounts of volunteering she does on the side – Leonie managed this week to squeeze in a trip to Birmingham. Dwarfed in comparison by […]

Many of us who volunteer use our skills to do so. Whether we have learnt them through academia, during the course of our professional careers or simply out of life experience, the tools and talents that we have developed throughout our lives can really shine through in the world of volunteering. Whether you are a […]

On the 4th of February JVN 2013 held a meeting in Manchester which brought volunteer-involving organisation together to ascertain how to motivate and inspire Jewish volunteers in Manchester. The guest speaker was Langdon Community chief executive Robert Mutch whose aim was to offer a perspective of volunteering in the Jewish community that the Jewish community themselves were […]

You may remember that JVN, supported by the Board of Deputies, conducted a campaign in 2012 on behalf of the Jewish community called the Jubilee Hour campaign. The campaign encouraged people to give 60 minutes of their time for Her Majesty The Queen’s 60 years of public service. JVN collected 50,000 hours from the Jewish […]

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago entitled ‘What Makes A Volunteering Role Suitable’, highlighting the need to change our attitudes towards the ‘suitability’ of a candidate for a particular volunteering role. I asserted that ‘those who claim to have individual support needs should be taken on their individual merits, not as part of […]