The Cathedral Volunteer Programme

Cathedral Volunteer Programmes provides unemployed volunteers with experience, support and connects them to local employers.

The Manchester Cathedral Volunteer programme has been running for 3 years and currently supports 100 unemployed people each year. To date more than 50% of volunteers have moved into work.

Individuals complete at least 10 weeks of part-time volunteering with the Cathedral and other local organisations, with coaching and peer support through regular work clubs. A local college provides accredited training, and major local employers including Ikea and Virgin Money, support the programme through staff volunteers and guaranteeing interviews for those who successfully complete the programme.

A funding award of £335,000 will help scale up the project in Manchester and launch it at two more cathedrals, reaching 180 volunteers in the next year and more than 300 the following year. We will support the team to launch a new charity with the vision that the volunteering model could ultimately be replicated at every cathedral in the country.

Find out more: www.manchestercathedral.org

VIY - Volunteer It Yourself

VIY challenges young people aged 14 to 24 to learn trade and building skills by committing to fix local youth clubs and community buildings.

Young people are supported by local tradespeople volunteering their time as mentors, alongside partners including Wickes and Rated People, providing materials, further training, as well as work placement and apprenticeship opportunities. Together these forms of social action support young people to volunteer in order to improve their skills and employment prospects. At the same time, the programme helps deliver regeneration, inter-generational relationships and better youth services.

VIY has been designed and delivered by Cospa and London Youth, and with support from the Big Lottery Fund has already worked with 1,300 young volunteers and 200 tradespeople across England and Wales.

VIY has been awarded £409,327 to scale up its programme, and in the next year and a half Cospa plans to establish VIY as a sustainable social venture, working in partnership with youth organisations and businesses across the country to reach another 1,000 young people and 135 tradespeople.

Find out more: www.volunteerityourself.org

Steps Ahead Mentoring by CIPD

Steps Ahead Mentoring recruits and matches HR professionals to act as mentors to unemployed young people.

CIPD is the professional body for HR and people development. Over the last few years it has developed Steps Ahead, working closely with Jobcentre Plus who have referred more than 2,000 jobseekers aged 18-24 to the project. Steps Ahead leverages skilled professional volunteers to support people in their community back into work.

CIPD have ambitious plans to grow and Within five years CIPD want 10% of its members to be involved in mentoring at any given time, creating a culture where volunteering is the norm for HR professionals.

CIPD have been awarded £142,500 to accelerate the growth of Steps Ahead, increasing the number of registered mentors to 4,000 across England by 2016. CIPD will also work with Jobcentre Plus and others to ensure the programme reaches more young people, and build evidence of the project’s impact.

Find out more: www.cipd.co.uk/publicpolicy/mentoring-steps-ahead-initiative.aspx

Smart Works

Smart Works helps female job seekers back into the workplace.

Smart Works supports women who have been unsuccessful at interviews in the past by offering a styling session and clothes for interview. Alongside this, women also take part in a one-to-one coaching session to prepare them for their interview, and gain access to a professional support network. This powerful combination builds confidence, and the results are clear - more than three quarters of its clients had been unemployed for a year or more, but last year 57 per cent secured a job within a month of their first appointment.

Smart Works has been operating in London since 2000. It now has two successful centres in London, allowing the service to help 1,500 women each year and has recently licensed its model to its first affiliate in Edinburgh.

In October 2014, Smart Works was awarded £235,000 (including £20,000 for evaluation) to develop five new affiliates in England over the next 18 months, with the aim of giving high quality support to more than 2,000 job seekers from more than 150 volunteers in the next 18 months, with potential for more rapid growth in the future.

Find out more at: www.smartworks.org.uk

Task Squad

Task Squad is a new service from vInspired which helps find short-term paid work for young people with a track record of social action.

Young people are disproportionately affected by unemployment in the UK – around 17 per cent of 18-24 year olds are currently unemployed (May 2014).

vInspired has facilitated more than one million volunteering opportunities for young people since 2006, and through this experience knows that volunteering can develop skills that are crucial for the workplace. But there is a gap between getting volunteering experience and getting a long-term job. Task Squad seeks to bridge the gap by providing young people with volunteering experience and skills that will enable them to progress into the labour market, first through paid short-term work, and then into permanent employment.

In October 2014, Task Squad was awarded £150,000 (including £25,007 for evaluation) to expand this work. In total it will help 13,000 young people with a track record in social action to find work. This award was match funded by a further £150,000 from the Nominet Trust.

Find out more at: www.tasksquadhq.com

Vi-Ability

Vi-Ability works to help young people to develop their skills and find work, while supporting community sports clubs to become financially sustainable.

Its core eight-week training and volunteering programme is for young people who are not in education, employment or training. It introduces young people (referred by JobCentre Plus) to the commercial management of sports clubs, while supporting them to make a positive difference to their local community through social action. To date 74 per cent of participants have entered employment or further training.

The programme has grown rapidly in Wales over the last two years and Vi-Ability has an ambitious plan to scale up the organisation across the UK.

In October 2014, Vi-Ability was awarded £265,504 (including £11,425 for evaluation) to support the replication of the programme in London, developing partnerships with 14 sports clubs, and supporting 740 young people to develop their skills and find work.

Find out more at: www.vi-ability.org