It’s Volunteer Week. The time every year when charities like ours crank up the hard sell: “Volunteer with us – we need you!” Well, maybe later. But first this year I thought we’d do something a bit different and tell you instead about a success story. A different way of how we attract and train our volunteers.
Like all charities, the CAB network can’t afford to employ as many paid staff as we’d like. Yet we are overwhelmed with people needing advice, so we rely on volunteers. And CAB volunteers need to be trained on a wide range of topics, so our in-house training course needs to be thorough and professional – and it is.
Up until the pandemic in 2020, the model of CAB volunteer training was that you went to your local CAB, offered to volunteer and they put you through the training programme locally: ie a room with flipcharts and name stickers.
Then suddenly in 2020, this model was no longer possible due to the Covid restrictions. But my own CAB in West Lothian knew that we needed more advisers than ever - we couldn’t just stop recruiting people. So we set up an online training programme so that we could get enough new advisers to help the community through the crisis. We also knew it would attract new volunteers.
Over the year we recruited and trained 10 new volunteer advisers. That’s a hugely significant number for one CAB. And their feedback was that they’d found the whole programme much easier and more flexible than the traditional model.
So, we decided we should expand the project to cover the whole of the CAB network in Scotland. The "Increasing Volunteers" project now offers our new virtual training model to all 59 Scottish CABs.
Motherwell & Wishaw CAB have joined with us in West Lothian to deliver the training, and over the last two years no fewer than 28 CABs have joined the programme, so we are now training new volunteers right across the country. People from Yell to Stranraer can volunteer and they’ll be "virtually" trained by us online in the comfort of their own home, after which they’ll be able to walk into their local CAB to finish the course there and begin advising.
Our project has recruited 210 new volunteers over the two years it has been running. I’m extremely proud of that, especially as many of the new recruits have told us they probably wouldn’t have engaged with the traditional system, due to its lack of flexibility.
Of course, not everyone is able or willing to do things online so "in-person" training is still available at all CABs for those who want it. But our virtual project is a terrific example of how the CAB network is constantly adapting how we do things.
Now, I know I said I would forego the hard sell, but I make no apology for doing it now. Because the CAB network really does rely on volunteers and the cost of living crisis means we’ve never been busier and need all the volunteers we can get. CAB volunteering gives you the opportunity to give back to your community whilst increasing your own personal knowledge and skills, so why not consider it? If you’re interested, contact your local CAB, or go to www.cas.org.uk/about-us/volunteer-citizens-advice-bureau.
Karen Nailen is manager of West Lothian Citizens Advice Bureau
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