With the yesterday wrap up of the youth conference, today we had the kickoff of the main event that will last till Sunday.
Here some of the takeaway
The old fashion time banking is still alive and kicking. I had the opportunity to come to know about Hourvillage, (https://www.hourvillage.com/) a recently launched mobile application that creates a community of givers and takers moved not by financial remuneration but rather by reciprocity.
Like the classic time banking this application offers a market place where members help each other through which a person offers a service not expecting compensation but instead earning the right to spend a so called credit by getting a service or an help free of cost by someone belonging to the community.
Time banking is a bit of fringe thing, it is not even considered, at least from the orthodox of volunteering sector, a pure form of volunteering as it is founded on the idea that economy can also work differently.
Brought to some extents it is a bit utopian concept but I still believe that its basic principles and the values behind it are very important.
Time banking had always had a bit of problem in terms of branding, the name “time banking” probably has been more a liability than an asset and therefore you should not be surprised that the Hoursvillage does not really sell itself as a time-banking but rather as local marketplace for skills and services.
I also came to know about InvolveME, an on line platform promoted by Volunteering New Zealand, the national body promoting volunteerism in New Zealand.
Here a short description from this web site (http://involveme.nz/):
“VNZ’s new best-practice online tool InvolveMe is designed to help you improve the impact of volunteering within your organisation. It enables you to assess and feedback on more effective volunteer involvement within their organisations.
InvolveMe 360 is a organisational tool that enables a volunteer-involving organisation to survey staff and volunteers on the quality and performance of its volunteer programmes. This tool collects and collates feedback using a short survey of staff and volunteers across: strategy, organisation culture, communication, and tools, processes, and resources supporting volunteering”
Moving to a totally different type of project, yesterday I also came to know about a large network of volunteers’s managers existing in the Australian state of Victoria that was set up by a local health provider, Bendigo Health (http://www.bendigohealth.org.au/)
The organization employing around 3100 staff and mobilizing created the network of volunteers’ managers with the aim of ensuring the compliance with standards and as a way to best harness the support provided by hundreds of volunteers being mobilized in multiple health centers of the area.
Last but not the least I came to know about the level of professionalism used by a not for profit in Hong Kong, The Baptism Oi Kwan Social Service, http://hotmeal.bokss.org.hk/en/index/main/ a large not for profit providing a different array of services in multiple areas of social care that came up with a framework for improved management in its mental health program, the Tree of Life. Through an extensive survey and internal discussions, the management was able to redesign the internal volunteering management system that truly puts volunteers at the center.
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