JVN Blog

A Familiar Refrain… The awe inspiring prayer Unetaneh Tokef, questioning who will live and who will die, is a most familiar refrain for Rosh Hashanah. The prayer repeatedly states that G-d has inscribed a judgment against all who have sinned, but teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer) and tzedakah can alleviate the decree. None of these elements […]

This week we handed our blog over to JonFreedman, a volunteer and former London 2012 Games Maker. We asked him to give us his thoughts on how we can rekindle the spirit of London 2012, one year after the Games captured the giving disposition of a nation. This is what he had to say… My […]

Those of you who are keen followers of JVN’s Twitter feed or fans of our Facebook page may have noticed that the volunteering efforts of certain JVN favourite have been popping up from time to time. We even mentioned him briefly in our blog about last year’s Jewish Living Expo, way back in the spring […]

I was recently at a friend’s party. I knew one person there – the hostess, who had invited me – and so I was duly forced to mingle with people I didn’t know. With everyone I met, I found myself asking the same familiar questions: “What’s your name?”, “Who do you know here?”, and the […]

Volunteering for a particular cause or organisation is often a way of becoming extremely passionate about it. People can go to extreme lengths in terms of the time they dedicate and, in some circumstances, the risks they take to see their vision become a reality. In this blog, JVN Intern Elliot Cukier examines just how far […]

Many of us who volunteer use our skills to do so. Whether we have learnt them through academia, during the course of our professional careers or simply out of life experience, the tools and talents that we have developed throughout our lives can really shine through in the world of volunteering. Whether you are a […]

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago entitled ‘What Makes A Volunteering Role Suitable’, highlighting the need to change our attitudes towards the ‘suitability’ of a candidate for a particular volunteering role. I asserted that ‘those who claim to have individual support needs should be taken on their individual merits, not as part of […]

It is no secret that in order to get the most out of people in their job, you need to find someone to fit the job description. You wouldn’t invite a history graduate to speak at a nuclear physics conference, and you wouldn’t send a fisherman to fight a fire. Why not? Because they aren’t […]

The winter season is meant to be a time of caring, sharing and goodwill. But every so often something comes along that dampens our spirits. Looking for a bit of positive news about the charity sector’s fortunes over the last year, we turned to the Back Britain’s Charities campaign, who only two weeks ago reported […]

On 21st November, some of the female members of JVN’s staff team went to TrainE-TraidE‘s Women in the Workplace Conference in Finchley. The conference was extremely well-attended and twelve speakers, experts in their fields, led workshops on a large variety of topics, including JVN Director Leonie’s workshop entitled “Volunteering – your way back into work.” […]