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Under new plans announced by Nick Clegg yesterday, charities and businesses will be rewarded for getting unemployed young people into work or training. The scheme will target young people who are the furthest away from the labour market – those who have recently left school with poor GCSEs and are not in any further education or training – and will reward businesses and charities that can keep them in work or training for 12 months. We know that something needs to be do...

Some people argue that there is nothing special about student volunteers. Perhaps the activities they take part in do not necessarily differ from other ‘volunteer-types’. However, (and sorry to bore you with statistics) in a recent study Georgina Brewis et.al found that 63% of surveyed students reported to have formally volunteered since they had started university. This percentage is significantly higher than the national standard with 40% of adults volunteering ...

Today marks the beginning of Student Volunteering Week 2012, organised by Volunteering England. Currently in its 11th year, the campaign’s theme is Back to basics: community roots, turning the spotlight on informal volunteering and community action. According to Volunteering England, 63% of students take part in some form of formal voluntary activity whilst at university and 95% of students who volunteer are driven to do so out of a desire to improve things or to help people - pr...

Last weekend I was fortunate to attend IMPACT 2012, the national conference on student volunteering mentioned last week in our pre-IMPACT blog. The weekend saw the congregation of representatives throughout the student volunteering world, including delegates from 40 universities coming together to discuss the future of UK student volunteering. The conference was divided into three themes. Firstly, ‘Discover It’ which saw organisations presenting best practice in the field a...

My job as PR Manager at vInspired is pretty, well, inspiring. I come to work every day and get to tell the world about some of the most impressive young people in the country. But while it feels like a great honour to be able to shed light on amazing young people, it often feels like a thankless task. Last week we announced the finalists for the vInspired National Awards. I spent a day calling round local papers to tell them our moving stories of triumph over adversity, self-less ...