Volunteering is pivotal to maintaining our green spaces and waterways. A route back to environmental volunteering is emerging and there are fascinating alternative online opportunities for those who want to volunteer remotely now. A huge thank you to the environment professionals who contributed to our Environmental Sector Mastermind Group shaping how team volunteering can resume safely and compliantly, here is what they think.
The ecosystem extends far beyond public ponds and parks which are dwarfed by the collective scale of the country’s allotments, gardens and communal green spaces. Those spaces owned or managed by the third sector rely on volunteers to preserve the ecosystem and contribute to the health and well being of society. Careful maintenance is needed to preserve the fragile environment in which our plants, insects and animals live.
Together we have developed Covid-19 compliant processes to enable groups to return when the Government eases restrictions imminently as part of the track and trace payback. A return will be carefully managed with risk and regulatory compliance at the forefront. There is much to do and we know there are teams that want to do it; soon they can.
Environmental contributions extend beyond the hands on with a plethora of opportunities for remote participation in citizen science, ecological surveys such as butterfly or insect watch, square meter gardening, or simply identifying and reporting. All part of the monitoring, measuring and maintaining strategy. The autumn is when volunteers are needed the most, it is time to start planning as we need to resume planting the 1.5 billion trees the UK needs to tackle climate change. We have much to do.
Employee Volunteering is a Community Interest Company helping companies build high impact individual, team and remote volunteering programmes. Our fully managed team activities, skills programmes and suite of online volunteering solutions are there to help volunteers make an even bigger difference. #strongertogether. #volunteersafely
