November 25, 2021: "Our lockdown mentoring plan was a lifeline, and it’s still going." A profile of a psychology-related mentoring and skills-development program that pivoted from onsite to online because of COVID-19. It involved the undergraduate psychology programme at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Our final-year class of 13 students decided to tackle this lack of connection, as well as our missing out on skills development, by creating PsychOut (short for ‘Psychology Outreach’). It would be a volunteer programme in which we mentored secondary-school students and acquired skills for our future careers in the process. We recruited graduate students and professors to add depth to our expertise... PsychOut sessions took the form of one-on-one virtual meetings every two weeks throughout the 2020 school year, at which the secondary-school students followed the progress of the undergraduate mentors’ research projects. We supplemented this in-depth exposure to the mentors’ research areas with a series of virtual documentary screenings, followed by discussions with invited researchers. Finally, the mentoring pairs presented a research paper of their choice orally, to help the school students develop their communication skills (with modest prizes for the top three, supplied by our department and judged by faculty members).
November 18, 2021: How highly-skilled online volunteers help partners in Africa to embrace technology, innovation & entrepreneurship. Business for Health Solutions (BHS) is a nonprofit that “applies an innovative private-sector approach to increase healthcare access in Africa.” BHS facilitated remote business and technical assistance, delivered by teams of international private sector experts through virtual volunteering. BHS arranges for experts around the world to volunteer their time, using simple communication technology such as Microsoft Teams, for three months to a year or even longer to help client recipients fill specific gaps on the ground in Africa, from Tanzania to Ghana. An example: the volunteer and recipient might work remotely on process mapping to identify potential bottlenecks and then develop an action plan together. A BHS representative notes, “Everything is virtual. All you need is reliable connectivity.”
October 29, 2021: Berklee Online Mentor Collective, affiliated with the Berklee College of Music. Through this online mentoring community, students have ongoing access to a network of mentors including Berklee Online graduates and current students, trained to offer guidance and advice. Students are matched with a personal mentor based on common academic interests, career goals, life challenges, and experiences. Additionally, students use the platform’s discussion guides and goal-setting activities to help spark meaningful conversations with their counterparts. Topics range from time management and work-life balance to networking and job-seeking advice.
October 26, 2021: DNA Doe Project mobilizes geneologists as online volunteers to help identify unknown persons. The DNA Doe Project was founded in 2017 as a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation with the mission to identify John and Jane Does - people who are deceased and are cannot be identified - using genetic genealogy. DNA Doe Project is an all-volunteer organization with over 60 experienced genetic genealogists volunteering to its cause. Volunteers have experience in traditional (paper trail) genealogy research, online genealogy, marketing, administrative, and any skills needed by the DNA Doe Project. This article notes that they helped identify the remains of a serial killer.
September 27, 2021: Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scramble to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of Afghanistan. All around the world, particularly in the USA, online volunteers, most working on their own, independent of any formal group, have been trying to put together SIV, P-1 and P-2 visa applications for Afghans who helped the USA military, USA programs and USA citizens working in Afghanistan, and research visas so these at-risk Afghans can go to another country to wait for their visas. Jayne Cravens blogs about her experience volunteering for this global virtual volunteering endeavor, dubbed “digital Dunkirk,” what tasks she and other volunteers have undertaken, the emotional toll it has taken, and how not all volunteering has a mug or a t-shirt at the end of an assignment. An update: FBI agents question Afghan rescue groups: "The FBI has been reaching out to members of the veterans’ groups working to evacuate American citizens and at-risk Afghans and inquiring about their activities, in at least one case visiting a group leader at his home."
September 22, 2021: GREECE: "Connect the dots" with the support of the US Embassy. The official launch of the “Connect the dots” program, a start-up program run by The Hellenic Initiative with the support of the Hellenic Initiative, took place in September at an onsite event at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. Through the program, successful Greeks up to 40 years old provide online mentoring to talented and promising entrepreneurs from Greece who are starting their careers.
September 7, 2021: Inside The Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum’s Virtual Docent Program. Since July 2020, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an adjunct of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM), has engaged virtual, remote docents to guide and interact with onsite visitors at its welcome desk and exhibitions. These remote, video volunteers appear on monitors at stations scattered throughout the museum in Chantilly, Virginia, offering live commentary and conversation, and serving as an antidote to COVID-related social distancing measures. The center launched its virtual docent program as an experiment, but just a month in, these virtual guides were installed as part of its normal operations. The remote nature of the program ensures pandemic-safe interactions within the galleries, while enabling the museum to greatly expand its volunteer recruitment base. Because virtual docents sign in remotely via Microsoft Teams, volunteers could be located in any part of the world, unbound by geography. Today, the Udvar-Hazy Center isn’t the only institution with a virtual volunteer initiative — the San Diego Museum of Art the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hudson River Museum are just some venues that offer docent-led virtual tours. NASM, however, was one of the first to institute such a program. Richard Weld, the museum’s Visitor Services Supervisor, tells Jing Culture and Commerce "[Being a virtual docent] is much more dynamic than regular volunteering. You have to be focused on that screen the entire time."
September 6, 2021: The story of how a young Black woman named Eliza came to live — and work — on a plantation in eastern Wake County, North Carolina in 1841 might have been lost to history if not for property deeds. Eliza was an enslaved woman, one of at least 14 enslaved people who toiled for the family of Benton and Burchett Williams on what is now known as Oak View County Park in Raleigh. Her arrival at the Williamses’ farm was noted legally as the transfer of an asset, a gift to Burchett from her father, William Powell, because at the time, enslaved people weren’t considered people, but property. The Enslaved Persons Project is a collaborative endeavor between the University of North Carolina Greensboro Libraries, North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, Wake County Register of Deeds, Shaw University. The goal is to create a centralized database of information about formerly enslaved people contained in bills of sale from Wake County. Once complete, the community will have access to search these historic documents and high-resolution images. Online volunteers are key to the success of this project.
September 2, 2021: When the program My Block, My Hood, My City (M3) faced the challenges of lock down early in the pandemic, the Chicago nonprofit had to pivot from its regular in-person activities. M3 is known for bringing together hundreds of volunteers to make tangible differences in marginalized communities. Before the pandemic, M3 focused on shoveling the sidewalks of clients in the winter or ensuring they had water or a fan in the summer. Volunteers also took simple actions — beautifying parks, cleaning up neighborhoods and introducing young people to new experiences. Wellness calls were a standard way M3 kept in touch with senior neighbors during a time of high need. Phone calls fit M3’s style of taking simple steps to reach a high goal. Like many organizations, M3 remained responsive to community needs and began exploring virtual options. The group started making wellness calls to seniors, noting any needs M3 could fulfill. helped to keep people connected and communities served during a time of uncertainty and isolation. As volunteers checked in with seniors, they were alerted to food and wellness needs, as well as hurdles to accessing resources. The programs that resulted not only kept the organization connected to its work, but also helped corporate volunteers continue to engage in meaningful service. And a key was that this program already had the community connections and client trust built for this program to work. During a year of increased awareness of social inequities, M3 was flooded with volunteers looking to lend a hand, though those volunteer numbers rise and fall. Corporate partnerships, on the other hand, provide a sense of stability. Article sponsored by Mars and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.
August 18, 2021: More than 40 volunteers at the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh are helping people in Afghanistan that worked for US-funded initiatives to apply for asylum. Graduate students are assisting online most with one simple-yet-critical piece of the dilemma: getting proof they previously worked with a qualified U.S. employer. Part of the trouble stems from civilians having trouble getting a hold of former employers, including those they worked for five to 10 or 15 years ago. The newly available “Priority 2” refugee option has a narrow definition of who can apply: Afghans who are current or former employees of U.S.-funded programs, U.S.-based media organizations and U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations, along with those who worked for U.S. and NATO military operations but do not meet the requirements for a special immigrant visa (SIV). This article has more info. Here is how I found out about this program, from a Aug. 15 tweet. And here is an Aug. 17 tweet about the program.
July 15, 2021: Setting up a Digital Buddies project – What we Learned. Digital Buddies started during the Covid 19 pandemic to enable older people in the Scottish Borders to connect digitally with friends, family, groups & the wider world. Digital Buddies teamed the older people up with a digital buddy, often a family member, friend or neighbor. The buddy then supports the person with whatever they wish to learn to do at their own pace, with the aid of step by step picture instructions and our assistance. We also provide a tablet and access to the internet to those who do not have access to technology. Currently there are just 15 older people in the Borders participating in Digital Buddies. Many were apprehensive at the beginning, as they worried they might not remember or manage. With the help from their buddies they are now regularly using their digital device to video call with friends and family, join local groups, meetings or classes that have moved online in Covid19, attend virtual religious services, do their shopping, and much more. Resources provided to participants include how to access the accessibility settings on the tablet devices used, how to charge the devices and use them to listen to podcasts, access email, etc., as well as digital inclusion tips.
July 2021: Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) accepts applications in July for internships (unpaid) - online volunteering opportunities at various US government agencies, including US Forest Service agencies, US National Parks, the USA Geological Survey (USGS), the USA Delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council, USA consulates in various countries and firefighter associations. These online volunteering opportunities are open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents in "student status." These positions are 10 hours a week. Every year, employees from across the federal government register as “mentors’ on the vsfs.state.gov site. They submit projects from May 1st - June 24th for interns to do through this program. Students apply in July. They choose three of the hundreds of projects and introduce themselves - virtually - to those mentors by writing a personal statement. August is matching month, when mentors get to see all the students who have picked their project. Through interviews and emails, mentors make their selections and work begins in September.
6 June 2021: "Virtual Volunteering is not only helping people in our community, It's helped me too." Dan Burges is one of 4,000 people who volunteered with Leonard Cheshire service Hill House in Sandbach (United Kingdom) in the last year, and virtual activity has been vital to keep people connected. Hill House is recognised as a hub where new assistive technology is trialed to transform the care experience. Dan has been volunteering to support of Mark at Leonard Cheshire since 2012, and pivoted to remote volunteering during the pandemic using weekly letters, then video chats on WhatsApp. He wrote this article for volunteersweek.org, a UK-based initiative of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Excerpt:
During the pandemic, the focus was about maintaining connection.
Through technology, I was engaging with residents across three
services in the North West: Hill House, The Orchard, and Eden Square.
Zoom has obviously been hugely beneficial, and I soon learned how
technology could provide further inspiration for my volunteering
through a virtual DJ computer programme. I love learning new skills
and I have now delivered karaoke sessions for multiple Leonard
Cheshire Services. I also hosted a quiz through Zoom at Hill
House in Sandbach and The Orchard in Liverpool. I did this by
designing a PowerPoint presentation after playing around with the
programme. I also managed to hone my skills by attending an
intermediate PowerPoint course run by Leonard Cheshire’s digital
inclusion team. This has boosted my confidence further.
Virtual volunteering is not only helping Leonard Cheshire and the
people in our community, it’s helped me too. It’s about self-worth,
knowing you’re making a difference although you’re not there in
person.
21 May 2021: UNICEF Serbia and Young Researchers of Serbia launched an online volunteering initiative (Volonteri Na Mreži / volonterinamrezi.rs). It has mobilized more than 750 online volunteers since April 2020. Click on #VolonteriNaMreži for tweet updates.
12 May 2021: As vaccinations began to become available beyond medical staff and first responders in the USA in early in 2021, DYI/independent efforts by online volunteers to help the elderly get the very-hard-to-get vaccination appointments - and they were often hard to get because they could be made only online (there is still a digital divid!) or because of poorly-designed state web sites. Some examples:
Now, these efforts are happening in other countries, including Canada
and India. In India, the focus is more on getting oxygen and
ventilators, the most critical need, than vaccine appointments. The efforts
in India are profiled on this thread on the TechSoup Community. An
example of a Canadian effort is Vaccine
Hunters Canada. While these are all excellent virtual volunteering
examples, I just don't have the bandwidth to study them - to find out
how volunteers are recruited and onboarded, how volunteers are screened,
supervised and supported, how privacy is ensured, how success is
measured, what tech tools are most valuable, etc.
8 April 2021: Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP) recently profiled Team4Tech, a company that facilitates relationships between nonprofits / NGOs and corporations to allow employees to volunteer. Projects include training teachers and staff on new skills such as digital literacy, integrating educational software into teaching and learning to improve core subject skills, and using project-based learning techniques and maker learning to develop creative problem solving and collaboration skills. Technology implementations can range from initially bringing classroom tablets or teacher laptops to a school or educational nonprofit, to identifying educational software aligned to the curriculum, to configuring servers that allow offline access to educational resources in areas that have limited connectivity. One of their partnerships is with Adobe. "Since 2015, more than 70 Adobe employees have been selected as Team4Tech Fellows, dedicating more than 11,000 hours of pro bono consulting in India, Cambodia, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Vietnam, Malawi and the US." Until the global pandemic, the Adobe volunteering program with Team4Tech was done traditionally, onsite and face-to-face. The pandemic forced companies like Adobe to embrace virtual volunteering and allowed Adobe to continue to engage employees remotely: pro bono volunteer hours nearly doubled in 2020 from the previous year. The team-based model used by Team4Tech is meant to promote meaningful employee connections in virtual settings and to offer opportunities for career growth and professional development for employees. Team4TEch encouraged participants to use Padlet, Miro, and Slido to make online volunteer experiences more engaging. From the article: "Even as employees return to offices when the pandemic wanes, opportunities for virtual volunteering will remain... The unexpected result was that employees could build connections and engagement around the world in new ways. And a key lesson was, whether in-person or online, high-quality employee volunteer programs require intentional facilitation and long-term partnerships with nonprofits to provide meaningful impact for both the volunteers and the nonprofits." Indeed - what a shame they weren't familiar with virtual volunteering, and The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, long before the pandemic!
30 March 2021 (Scotland): A week in the life of a Home-Start volunteer. How an in-home support network of volunteers in the UK have adapted during COVID. Home-Start is a charity in the UK that helps families facing isolation, the effects of post-natal illness, disability or mental health issues, bereavement, financial difficulties and a whole range of other challenges. Every Home-Start volunteer is trained to help families to overcome these challenges. No judgment, it is just compassionate, confidential help and expert support. Last year Home-Start supported 56,000 children in 27,000 families, in communities across the UK. When Covid-19 struck, Home-Start had to rapidly adapt the way it supports families, moving from face-to-face support to remote contact. For the 13,500 Home-Start volunteers providing confidential, compassionate and non-judgemental support, this brought many new challenges. Here Susan, a volunteer with Home-Start Erewash, provides an insight into a typical week for her as a Home-Start volunteer during the pandemic. Note that the article never mentions virtual volunteering, never calls her an online volunteer, but that's what this is!
26 March 2021: Profiles of Immigrants in Canada Volunteering During the Pandemic. The profiles include two volunteering virtually: Iranian-born, Mina Mirzaei, who first volunteered with BrainTech Robotics, a non-profit that enables BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) girls and women to explore and work in STEM, in 2018. She connected with them through Volunteer MBC and transitioned to online service during the pandemic. And Sophia Marsheva, a Russian-born University of Toronto student, who came across flyers for Kids Help Phone, a charitable organization providing around the clock free and confidential professional online and telephone counseling to youth. The article notes that new residents to Canada often find that volunteering may give them the foot in the door they need professionally to address the “Canadian experience” that permanent immigration requires. In a study conducted by Statistics Canada, participants mentioned that volunteering had significantly increased their interpersonal and communication skills along with knowledge about subject matters that they were previously unaware of like public health or women’s’ issues.
21 March 2021 Online volunteers work to get the COVID-19 vaccine to the people who need it. Tech accessibility remains an issue among the elderly and disabled, and vaccine doses are still concentrated primarily among white Americans. Lisa David Meyers, founder of the Facebook group New York COVID-19 Vaccine Info, has helped more than 5,000 people schedule vaccine appointments since her group began just two months ago. She says that what started as a small support group has become something of a full-time job, and her and the other volunteers are like family. Joel Leyden founded his own Facebook group, New York/ Connecticut Vaccine Hunters and Angels, and its associated website www.VaccineAngel.com, one month ago. Groups like these have popped up around the country and on all kinds of social media platforms, from Facebook, to instant messaging platform Discord, and online message boards on Reddit. "Vaccine angels," what some have taken to calling these volunteers, help people search for availability, book appointments, and share updated information as it becomes available. In Meyer's group, a dedicated group of 30 volunteers work essentially round-the-clock to scour the internet for available appointments. The group's administrators, including Meyers and her co-admin Amani Boudriga, compile daily lists of appointment requests — collected through an online form that anyone can fill out — and work to find availability. Once volunteers check off these names, they post remaining availability on their Facebook or Discord channels. The only skill required for this is patience, Meyers explains.
18 March 2021. Using Virtual Volunteering to Engage Diverse Communities. From iconic national parks to local urban green spaces, physical distancing requirements meant that many public lands would not be able to host in-person outreach and community engagement events. This had a significant impact on nationally recognized events like National Public Lands Day (NPLD) — one of the nation’s largest single-day volunteer efforts. In response to physical distancing requirements, the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) launched the NPLD virtual event sponsorship, designed to support innovative virtual events that connect the public to local parks, national forests and other public lands and waters during the annual NPLD celebration. Park professionals and land managers from across the country a re beginning to turn to virtual volunteer activities to connect diverse audiences to their public land sites. "While NEEF originally launched this sponsorship opportunity to support safe and physically distant activities on NLPD, we learned that virtual volunteer events also provide an ideal opportunity to engage diverse audiences. The nature of virtual volunteer events offers a low-barrier way to engage people from communities of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community and other groups that are often underrepresented on public lands." this article highlights virtual NPLD events that specifically impacted diverse communities.
16 March 2021. Rounding with Heart program leverages virtual volunteering for cardiac care hospital units. Rounding with Heart was founded in 2015 and serves as a program that partners with the cardiology unit of the University of Virginia Hospital to provide volunteers to help with scheduling rounds — a practice where a healthcare team discusses the status and treatment plan of each patient. The rounding program was done in person prior to the pandemic. Three of the almost 40 Madison House Medical Services programs — Rounding with Heart, Pediatric Genetic Counseling and Spanish Interpretation - have converted to online. Volunteers are tasked with making sure that the whole healthcare team, a group of 10 to 15 professionals, are present at video conferences to round — a process in which various medical professionals come together to discuss patients’ condition and plans for ongoing care. Madison House leadership and University Hospital Volunteer Services began coordinating the switch to virtual in September, and volunteers began serving in the first two weeks of November. Rounding with Heart has continued with 10 student volunteers as is typical for in-person sessions, however, volunteers are now split up by attending physician and service — Heart Failure and Acute Cardiology — rather than by location on the fourth floor of the hospital. The virtual visits by volunteers is done through Webex, a video conferencing platform protected by the U.Va. Health firewall. Before beginning to volunteer independently, Rounding with Heart volunteers are required to undergo training which involves watching a 30-minute video that provides more information and instruction on how to make the schedule for rounds and how to page the nurses through the hospital’s software — which is accessible remotely through the student’s laptops. Then they must join in on the virtual shift of the head program director or the Rounding with Heart program director to conduct a trial run of making the schedule and listening in on rounds alongside an experienced volunteer. Rounding with Heart volunteers focus primarily on the timing of having the patients’ nurses join the video call. In order to time reminders for nurses, volunteers sit in on the rounds so they know the optimal time to page the nurses to join the call when they are moving from one patient to the next. This allows for nurses to attend the discussions specifically for the patients they are assigned so they can quickly return to their other responsibilities after rounding sessions.
15 March 2021. Is virtual volunteering going away after the pandemic? Virtual volunteering expert Jayne Cravens explains in this four-minute video why virtual volunteering is here to stay, how it was well-established before the pandemic and there's a much better question to ask.
10 March 2021. Vaccine
hunters: family helps total strangers book vaccine appointments.
From CBS This Morning (video from TV). The most vulnerable Americans -
older people - are struggling to secure novel coronavirus vaccine
appointments online, often the only way they can schedule. A New York
family is focused on helping their local community stay safe and get
vaccinated, helping book vaccine appointments for strangers. The story
never calls it such, but that's virtual volunteering! A related story:
Grant Kimball, a junior at Norwalk High School in Iowa, started a Facebook
pageto help people, mostly older people, schedule appointments to
get vaccinated.
9 March 2021. Virtual volunteering helps youth get work experience in tourism and hospitality. A partnership between Waltham Forest College and Youth Hostelling Association of England & Wales (YHA), part of Hostelling International, has enabled 39 travel and tourism students to gain vital work experience during the lockdown caused by the global pandemic. The teenagers have taken their talents online to become website testers, secret shoppers and social media marketers for YHA, completing their 12-week work experience course element virtually. Under normal circumstances, the students would be working onsite within the network of youth hostels. Determined to find a solution and ensure the students are on track to complete their course, we decided on the best option of virtual volunteering. The students have set up their own YHA-focused Instagram account – @youthwaltham – to raise awareness of YHA amongst their peers. They are also testing out how easy it is for people to navigate our website and book breaks as part of its customer experience programme.
8 March 2021. Online volunteers preserve critical climate change data from Trump purge - and beyond. After hearing that then President-elect Donald Trump had appointed a notorious climate change denier to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team in 2016, scientists were concerned that vital environmental data would be taken down from federal websites and destroyed. They’d just seen brutal attacks on science in Canada — irreplaceable scientific records were dumped in the trash under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper — and they feared that something similar could happen in the US. The effort sparked by the email eventually snowballed into an online volunteering movement to rescue key environmental datasets and information about climate change from government websites. These volunteers succeeded in connecting with scientists within the EPA to document the agency’s transformation into an antagonist to environmental efforts in the US. And in some cases, the scientists were even able to mitigate the damage. The scrappy cadre of scientists, academics, and other supporters is now a largely volunteer-based group called the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). Their work is far from over, despite Trump leaving office, as they work to make sure another president can’t drastically remake federal websites or destroy data in the future.
8 March 2021. CTN digital coach volunteer spotlight: Ariana Chen. A senior at USC, Ariana studies gerontology and hopes to become a geriatrician. She is passionate about working with older adults and understanding their specific needs. While searching for volunteer opportunities that would allow her to work with older adults directly, Ariana came across Community Tech Network’s digital coach program. Since then, Ariana has work with three clients - learners - in her native language, Mandarin. One the CTN clients she has worked with wanted to use technology to maintain his singing and choir practices. Working together, Ariana and the client found different digital tools and apps that would allow him to share his audio over Zoom, harmonize with others, and back his vocals. She has learned is that building a personal connection is crucial to the learner’s success: "After the basics, they might not know exactly what else they want to learn. I have to really get to know them and use what I learn to formulate my own lessons to teach them things they might want to learn."
25 February 2021. India. India seeks online volunteers to fight cyber crime - plan draws criticism. India’s Home Ministry has developed plans to create a cybercrime division made up of volunteers who will police the internet for evidence of crimes, including child abuse, terrorism and "anti-national sentiment." Cybercrime has increased rapidly in India, with most cases involving fraud. Other key issues include sexual exploitation, blackmail and defamation. India’s Home Ministry has called on citizens to help counter these crimes by registering in one of three categories: identifying unlawful activity; promoting awareness to vulnerable groups; and working as an expert in more specialized areas such as malware analysis. But international rights groups and journalist associations say the broad definitions for some of the violations could be used to further harass or censor media outlets and chill free speech in such regions as Kashmir. Asking citizens to police the internet could lead to bullying and eliminate opposition or diverse voices, they are warning.
21 February 2021. Honoring volunteers with a professional chef-led cooking class. 64 volunteers who donate their time to the Esquimalt Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC), Personnel Support Programs (PSP), and the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum in Canada were recognized for their approximately 2,100 hours of time in 2019 and 2020 by participating in an invitation-only virtual cooking class led by Chef Dan Hayes of The London Chef. Chef Hayes is co-host of the cable television cooking show Moosemeat and Marmalade. The event took place Feb. 20 with an invited 99 people. Sponsored by the CANEX Volunteers’ Recognition Program, the evening cooking class was designed to be a fun way to recognize volunteers and a meaningful, memorable way for those volunteers to spend their time. Ingredients to make Chicken Tagine were given to each volunteer the day of the event, either by picking them up at a set location or direct to their door via a refrigerated delivery truck. Attendees then cooked Chicken Tagine through Chef Hayes’ step-by-step instructions and guidance.
19 February 2021: Mozilla's Common Voice initiative is a massive global database of donated voices that lets anyone quickly and easily train voice-enabled apps in potentially every language. This initiative is part of Mozilla's effort to train machine learning algorithms to understand more languages, and online volunteers contribute to the initiative by reading and recording predefined sentences in their native languages. The Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit organization that develops and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The foundation has a number of other initiatives that are dedicated to keeping the web open and accessible for everyone. To do that we need to empower web creators through projects like Common Voice. As voice technologies proliferate beyond niche applications, we believe they must serve all users equally. That means investing in more languages and accommodating diverse accents and demographics when building and testing voice technologies. Common Voice is a public resource available to everyone and Mozilla teams and developers around the world are already using it on our own projects as well. We're not only collecting voice samples in widely spoken languages but also in those with a smaller population of speakers. Volunteers can get more deeply involved by joining the CommonVoice Discourse, forums, submitting site issues via GitHub, or by joining the Matrix community chat.
10 February 2021: Online volunteer in Kazakhstan shares her story of global virtual volunteering. The United Nations Volunteers program presents a first hand account of an online volunteer in Kazakhstan who has helped with emergency mapping, women’s rights advocacy, NGO funding activities, creating learning opportunities for people in poverty, rare bird species conservation and much more via the United Nations's Online Volunteering Service.
3 February 2021: Building a Skills-Based, Remote Volunteer Program - A Look Into 12 Years of Partners in Food Solutions Operations, by Magdalene Mbaga, Director of Impact and Program ANALYTICS, FSO. Excerpt: "Success for a remote, global team is all about developing positive working relationships. One of PFS’ first volunteers from General Mills, who continues to serve our clients even into his retirement, is Dave Cummings. He says, 'Team members that never meet in person might not naturally develop relationships. Despite that, PFS virtual teams often develop strong team dynamics.' We have found that PFS must play a critical role in fostering a sense of teamwork. We see volunteers and clients accomplish large, complex projects together through remote teamwork because we set up teams with collaboration in mind." Following a conversation in 2007 with then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, PFS was conceived of by a small group of ambitious and innovative General Mills employees who found that offering the specialized knowledge of their company’s employees to existing food processing companies in Africa could be the most effective way to help strengthen the food system on the continent, benefiting everyone from farmers to consumers. They created a remote, skills-based volunteer program (virtual volunteering) to provide business and technical support for small-and-growing food companies in Africa. PFS has grown to a consortium of seven global food companies – Ardent Mills, Bühler, Cargill, DSM, General Mills, The Hershey Company, and J.M. Smucker Company – with more than 800 years of collective experience. PFS now has 25 employees around the world.
January 2021: How to Recruit & Engage Volunteers in a Time of Virtual Fatigue. This article by WBT Systems, which produces TopClass LMS, a learning management system for membership-based associations, but the advice is good for any program involving volunteers. The article notes that we are all burnt out by virtual fatigue and the last thing any of us wants is another online commitment, like regular committee or working group meetings. "As a result, many associations are finding it more difficult to recruit new volunteers and get existing volunteers to physically (virtually) and mentally show up for meetings." Some of the excellent advise includes "Review volunteering opportunities to make sure they offer meaningful experiences that connect to your members’ values and align with your association’s goals. No busywork right now—you can outsource that to a temp." Also "Don’t let volunteers continue on auto-pilot. If you’re struggling to fill volunteer roles, see what you can put on hold so you’re aligning the work of volunteers with what’s most important right now."
January 2021: State bar associations across the USA are supporting virtual mock trial competitions at high schools and universities and recruiting lawyers to volunteer their time as judges of the competition. This includes Dallas, Texas, Nevada, Dayton, Ohio.
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wiki home & index of resources | about this wiki | virtual volunteering definition | virtual volunteering examples | virtual volunteering myths | virtual volunteering research | virtual volunteering news
Want to know more about using the Internet to engage and support volunteers? See:
The
Last Virtual
Volunteering Guidebook
by Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis
The most comprehensive guide
available on virtual volunteering, including online mentoring,
micro-volunteeirng, virtual teams, high-responsibility roles,
crowd sourcing to benefit nonprofits and other mission-based
organizations, and much more.
Published January 2014, based on
more than 30 years of research. Available as both a print
book and an ebook.
