Dumfries and Galloway Council Achieves Volunteering Charter Mark
Dumfries and Galloway Council is delighted to become the first whole Council in Scotland to be awarded the Investing in Volunteers (IIV) Quality Standard of Excellence by Volunteer Scotland. The external accreditation was officially presented to Dawn Roberts, Chief Executive and Stephen Thompson, then Council Leader at the Ewart Library in Dumfries on Tuesday 14 February 2023 by Allana Fotheringham, Volunteer Manager, Volunteer Scotland. This achievement recognises the important role of volunteers in supporting the Council’s Priorities and service delivery and ensures that volunteers have a great experience when giving of their time and skills.
Our Council works with volunteers of all ages and backgrounds, across all our Directorates. Volunteers carry out a huge variety of roles for example, providing pupil support, helping run youth work services, running events, carrying out beach cleans and litter picks, to supporting people around food poverty, cataloguing archives, delivering a range of health and well-being activities with communities, path and countryside maintenance and helping their communities respond to unexpected events and emergencies.
The Council could not deliver the range of services it does without the invaluable support of its volunteers. Our staff appreciate this support as reflected in the comments below.
“Our volunteers are the best! We have 50+ volunteers who help deliver our Active Communities programme, whether as a walk leader or as a gentle movement / tai chi instructor for our Move More programme. They give up their time to help others and they really enjoy volunteering…and that makes a huge difference. For me, volunteers are a wider section of our staff, without them we would not be able to provide variety and breadth of programme that we currently do. They are passionate about the role the provide and we are very pleased to have them on board.” Tina Lockhart – Team Leader, Health and Wellbeing.
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“Volunteers in schools can be parents, representatives of partner organisations agencies, adult helpers, senior pupils and adult learners. Working through the Investing in Volunteers process has helped our Directorate to review our policy and procedures to support the partnership between volunteers and schools to be as supportive and accessible as possible. We would like to thank those family and community volunteers who already participate and look forward to working with more parents/families in the future.” Vanessa Morris – Support Officer Curriculum for Excellence.
"I don’t want to be too over the top but I just love working with our volunteers who over the years feel more like friends. We get a huge sense of achievement if we have been able to support volunteers for work experience or to learn new skills, who are then able to use this experience to gain employment. We see the volunteers as very much part of our Heritage Service Team they support our service to be able to make collections available to the public. And they bring a real ‘buzz’ to our Service as they are so passionate about what they do." Alison Burgess – Heritage Team Leader
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Allana Fotheringham, Volunteer Manager, Volunteer Scotland said “We are pleased to congratulate Dumfries and Galloway Council on their Investing in Volunteers achievement, they have shown real commitment to their volunteer programme, volunteers, and community. Great pride should be taken in the work they have done, becoming the first local authority area in Scotland to achieve Investing in Volunteers across all its services in an integrated way. We look forward to continuing to work with you, supporting your future learning and developments.”
Volunteer Scotland intends to celebrate Dumfries and Galloway Council’s achievement over the coming twelve months. To mark this significant milestone for our Council, Investing In Volunteers plaques and certificates will be displayed in each of the civic buildings across the region and a programme of visits to meet volunteers will be arranged to coincide with Volunteers Week from 1-7 June 2023.The Investing in Volunteers logo will appear alongside the Dumfries and Galloway Council logo on relevant documents and digital content.
Using the Investing in Volunteers logo
As we have now successfully achieved the Award, if your service involves volunteer you can make full use of the logo. There are some simple guidelines you must follow to help ensure the logo always looks best:
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- The black version should always be used when not printing in colour.
- The white reverse version should always be used when used with a coloured or patterned background.
- There should always be a reasonable amount of space around the logo.
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