dale lane

At the Solent Youth Action trustees meeting tonight, one interesting fact-let that got noted was that young people have volunteered over 172,000 hours in SYA projects and activities since we started.

I’m not normally a fan of endless statistics, but I thought this was an interesting one.

172,000 hours

or

7,167 days
(more if you consider ‘working days’)

or

nearly 20 years

Or… if you consider their time worth at least the minimum wage, then

£920,200

(Okay, so many of the young people we work with are too young to be elegible for the full £5.35 minimum wage but humour me – I’m playing with numbers. 🙂 )

Wow, that’s pretty cool. 😀

For the young people who do Millennium Volunteers, today’s transfer of MV from the DfES to the new independent charity ‘v’ is probably a non-event. I imagine many of them won’t notice at all – and “business as usual” is certainly the message that v is encouraging us all to send to them.

The most noticeable difference will probably be the change to the certificates that young people get after completing 200 hours of voluntary work. Before today, the certificates were signed by a government minister – because they were the responsibility of the DfES. Now that link has gone, the certificates from today will be signed by the Chief Exec of the new charity v – Terry Ryall.

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One of the things I found out about at the v conference on Thursday was vcashpoint.

vcashpoint is their “funding initiative” where they will give money directly to young people to fund set up voluntary community projects. The idea is that if a young person (aged 16-25) has an idea for something that they think will benefit their community, they can apply to v for a grant of up to £2,500 to help them make it happen. Successful applicants get the money transferred to a bank account of their choice, and v monitor the outcome of the project in much the same way that they would with a voluntary provider like us.

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I’m sat on a train, on my way to a one day “Welcome to v” conference. I’ve mentioned v many times now – this is the group that is taking over the running (and perhaps more importantly, the funding) of Millennium Volunteers (MV) from the DfES.

Millennium Volunteers is our biggest single source of funding in Solent Youth Action, so v is obviously important to us.

They have invited MV providers to come to London and hear about what they have done to date, and their plans for the future – including (finally!) some details about how they will be managing and monitoring the MV projects.

There is also something in the timetable about discussion and small group sessions to get our views on the shape of the new “National Youth Volunteering Programme”.

Plus, I imagine it’ll be the usual chance to network with other youth charities.