Volunteering: Do we need Passports or Passporting?

This event is now SOLD OUT, however, we will be recording the presentation and uploading it to the Support Cambridgeshire website along with any future events.

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About

Following on from the Connecting Communities Conference 2022, and the Vision for Volunteering event. Support Cambridgeshire partners are excited to bring you Volunteering: Do we need Passports or Passporting? An interactive and informative event where community groups and charities can explore the ideas surrounding the concept of volunteer passports and passporting between volunteer roles.

This event will start with a presentation from Gethyn Williams, who will bring you the theory behind this idea, most recently popularised by a government paper, Levelling up our Communities, which Danny Kruger MP wrote in September 2020 for the (former) Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Here he will talk through both the concepts of ‘Passports’ (usually used to provide recognition or validation of a volunteer’s activity) and ‘Passporting’ (common systems and processes used by organisations, collaborating around volunteering, designed to make volunteering more efficient for hosts and more streamlined for volunteers themselves) covering the challenges and opportunities of each.

Following this, there will be the opportunity for questions for the audience, with a discussion around the ideas and the possibility of this happening within Cambridgeshire.

Aims of event

• To upskill individuals to understand passports and passporting

• To allow groups and individuals to talk through barriers and opportunities

• To give those who wish to start to investigate and to build possible networks with others to do so

Who is this event for?

We see two audiences:

• those who manage volunteers and can bring a lived experience of dealing with volunteers to the discussion

• along with policymakers within the organisation, such as senior managers and trustees.

For passports or passporting to happen, there needs to be an agreement at the top to change ways of working. This event allows everyone to talk through challenges and understand why this massive change in recruiting and sharing volunteers might be needed.

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Gethyn Williams

Gethyn Williams is a voluntary sector leader and manager with over 20 years experience at local, regional and national levels in England and Wales. Hailing from Cardiff his early career was spent in several voluntary sector infrastructure organisations, including communications and training roles at CVS' in Nottingham and Lambeth and as Head of Policy at the regional London Voluntary Service Council from 2007-10.

In the 2010s he worked nationally in the youth and disability sectors and developed his specialism and passion for volunteering through work on the London 2012 volunteering legacy programme and senior roles at Volunteering Matters and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's Volunteering Strategy team, where he was Head of Data and Analysis throughout the peak Covid period.

Gethyn currently provides freelance support and consultancy to local and national non-profits, helping to transform their volunteering programmes and strategy and supporting their impact and governance ambitions. He recently led Sport England's engagement with the Vision for Volunteering and served on the partners' working group that wrote the Vision.

Locally Gethyn is Clerk to the Board of Trustees at The Commemoration Hall and leads their volunteering programme. He is also a member of the organising committee of the annual Needingworth Music Festival (NFEST).