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South Dublin Tidy towns 01 February 2012, 12.15
South Dublin Tidy towns
A South Dublin County Tidy Towns public meeting is taking place in Tallaght Stadium on Thursday 16th February at 7.30pm. Speakers will include a Tidy Towns competition adjudicator, Public Realm Designer, speaker from Lucan Tidy
Volunteer Centre Newsletter - January 12
Volunteer Centre Newsletter   Monday 9th January 2012 New Community Hub Announced. Are you a small community group in South
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Celebrate Volunteering! 17 November 2011, 14.40
Celebrate Volunteering!
Celebrate Volunteering on  5th December International Volunteer Day As you know, 2011 celebrated the European Year of Volunteering and we had many events in South Dublin
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New quality mark for volunteering! 07 November 2011, 15.25
New quality mark for volunteering!
Volunteer Ireland is delighted to announce that they recently secured funding from the EU as part of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 to develop a framework for a national quality standard for involving volunteers. This
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Training Officer Appointed PDF Print E-mail
Tallaght Echo - 22nd April 2004

South Dublin County Volunteer Centre has appointed a training officer to ensure both community groups and individuals make best use of the spirit of volunteerism.

After previously working with the Business in the Community organisation, Clodagh Gorman has been appointed to facilitate the training of groups so as to make the most of the volunteers that come through their doors.

Evaluation reports on the SDCVC have recently pointed to the fact that volunteerism in Tallaght remains buoyant, but poor use of those volunteers means that groups are not retaining the people who they manage to attract.

As well as this, an under-evaluation of the people who sign up to give their time, means that many volunteering roles fall into the category of menial tasks and do not properly utilise the skills these volunteers have learned in their working life.

Over the next three years Ms Gorman aims to improve the situation by looking at the needs of community groups and trying to maximise the benefits to them by choosing the right people for the right jobs

She said: "What we plan to do is look at training organisations to use volunteers that make themselves available, it is about attracting volunteers, utilising volunteers and retaining volunteers.

"I'll be working on a training needs analysis over the next few months with a view to launching the appropriate training programmes for groups in October of this year."

Along with meeting with community groups and examining how best they could use people willing to help, Ms Gorman is anxious to broaden people's opinion on the type of roles that can be filled by volunteers, including high skilled tasks.

For this purpose a special conference is being facilitated by Business in the Community and the SDCVC to showcase the range of skills which corporate staff members can hold and would be available to community groups for free if they use volunteers effectively.

This conference will take place in the National Irish Bank headquarters on the Airton Road on May 13, where 30 community groups will gather to investigate the most productive ways of engaging with the corporate sector to serve their own ends.

As a pilot project Ms Gorman sees the one day seminar as a unique opportunity for groups to learn how to mutually exploit volunteerism within the corporate sector.

She said: "The Business in the Community seminar will provide a forum on the day to show groups how they can get what they need from an organisation."
 
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