Red Cross Blogs

Volunteering during an economic downturn

By Katrina Crew
June 9, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Have you felt the bite of the credit crunch? Are you looking for a way to gain new skills or keep busy while in between jobs?

You’re not alone! Here at the Red Cross, we’ve seen a huge jump in the number of people interested in becoming volunteers. At the end of 2007, we were getting around 300 volunteering enquiries a month; we’re now getting around 1,400 a month!

Maryanne Burton, our head of volunteering, thinks this is due to the recession. “We’re seeing people who have been made redundant or taken early retirement, and a rising number of young people who are anxious about the tough job market they are about to enter.”

Volunteering is a great way to develop your CV because you can gain new skills and show potential employers that you care about your community. We’ve got loads of volunteering opportunities from emergency response to refugee services to charity shops, so you’re sure to find something you’re passionate about.

Click on the little audio box below to listen to our podcast about how volunteering changes lives. Download

For example, if you’re interested in developing your retail skills, we offer a fantastic National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) for our charity shop volunteers in England. Young charity shop volunteers (under 26) can also work toward a certificate in retail skills.

Even if you don’t have much time to spare, we have opportunities for young people (aged 15-25) to become online volunteers through our Red Recruit programme.

See? There really is something for everyone.

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Tags: charity shops, internship, NVQ, Red Recruit, volunteer, work experience

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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