Volunteers to be celebrated  

LOCAL volunteers will be celebrated during an event this week.  

National Volunteering Week 2019 runs from May 13-19, and events will be taking place all over the country showing people how they can get involved. 

It’s an historic year for volunteering in Ireland as the Government develops the first-ever national volunteering strategy. 

The strategy has the potential to progress and enhance volunteering in Ireland. One area the strategy will focus on is developing a definition of volunteering, which currently doesn’t exist in an Irish context. 

To this end, the focus of this year’s campaign is to start a nationwide discussion on volunteering in Ireland – why do people volunteer, what does volunteering mean to people and how does volunteering impact lives.

Volunteer Ireland chief executive Nina Arwitz said volunteering is an intrinsic part of Irish life. 

“It affects us all whether or not we are volunteers ourselves,” said Nina. 

“National Volunteering Week aims to showcase the scale of volunteering in Ireland and inspire people to volunteer but this year we want to go even deeper. “We want to get to the heart of communities across Ireland and hear from volunteers and the organisations that involve them. 

“Why do people volunteer and what can we do to ensure anyone who wants to volunteer can volunteer well into the future?”

PJ Gallagher – comedian and RNLI volunteer – was on hand to launch this year’s National Volunteering Week campaign, #WhyIVolunteer.

Volunteer Ireland is encouraging everyone to think about how volunteering impacts their local community this National Volunteering Week. 

For those ready to get involved, Volunteer Centres and Volunteering Information Services across the country will host events including open days and coffee mornings where people can find out about volunteering locally and see what goes on in their community. 

For more information visit www.volunteer.ie