What we do

Volunteers’ Week is a national celebration of volunteering, held annually on the first week of June. Highlights of Volunteers’ Week in 2017 included the JVN Roadshow in Edgware and Borehamwood; a special seminar for more mature volunteers at JW3, featuring guest speaker Dame Esther Rantzen; the Jewish Community Trustees’ Conference, run in conjunction with Lead; and the Maccabi GB Community Fun Run, for which we provided many of the volunteers from our Ad Hoc Volunteering Squad who were crucial to the event’s success. This was of course rounded off by JVN receiving The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

Volunteers’ Week 2018, from 1^st-7^th June, will once again feature the JVN Roadshow alongside other events, which will be confirmed in the near future.

The JVN Volunteering Awards have been held annually since 2014. The 2014-2016 events, sponsored by the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation, presented several awards to some of the community’s most outstanding volunteers. These included The Volunteer of the Year Award; The Volunteer Team of the Year Award; The Young Adult Leadership in Volunteering Award; and the prestigious Lifetime Achievement in Volunteering Award. Also presented was a special Friend of the Community Award, for an individual outside of the Jewish community who has supported the community and its institutions.

The 2017 Awards were incorporated into our 10^th Anniversary Gala Dinner in September 2017. We also created the Joy & Stanley Cohen Volunteers’ Hall of Fame, recognising select previous Award winners. You can read their stories here.

The JVN Volunteering Awards 2018 will be held in the autumn and details of how to nominate volunteers and the event will be released in the near future. Please contact Mike Silverstone on mike@jvn.org.uk if you have any questions regarding nominating a volunteer.

We work in close collaboration with schools, universities, synagogues, youth clubs and other Jewish and non-Jewish youth-focussed organisations to ensure that young people are properly equipped to volunteer as they make the transition from childhood to young adulthood. To find out more about our volunteering programmes and opportunities for young people, click here. We also put on occasional educational events for adults – click here to see upcoming events, or contact us to see what we have done in the past.

If you are a registered charity with JVN you will be sent invites to all our training sessions for voluntary sector professionals and trustees. Click here to register your organisation. You can also contact us for advice.

Places on our training seminars and other events are available at a discounted rate to employees and trustees of member organisations. Click here to find out more about JVN Partnership.

To view our latest research reports, click here.

We are heavily invested, through the JLGB eVOLve system, in rewarding young volunteers, and we also host the JVN Volunteering Awards for the Jewish community every other year.

Our aim is not only to inspire people to volunteer. We believe volunteering is a two-way street and that the volunteer stands to gain just as much as the organisation from the experience. Consequently, we provide events, a fully developed youth programme and charity internship opportunities. These, in addition to our comprehensive database of opportunities, serve to enrich the volunteering experiences we offer and increase the employability of our volunteers.

JVN has been improving the volunteering-related resources for the community for almost 8 years and plays a role in professionalising the management of volunteers in organisations through:

• Consultancy – advising and helping organisations to set up a volunteer programme, strategy and/or policy, and advice and facilitation in all matters regarding volunteering. We charge a modest hourly fee for this service. Member organisations can claim one hour’s free consultancy per year.
• Training – delivering training and seminars for staff responsible for volunteer management in their organisation. These can be delivered and tailor-made to the needs of a particular charity.