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Thursday Jun 08, 2006
Happy talk
Is the voluntary sector in general and the volunteering sector in particular just too nice?
Reading through the report on yesterday's 'debate' in Parliament to mark Volunteer's Week is like wading through melted down sweets ("Would the Hon. Gentleman agree with me that volunteers are all absolutely marvellous etc"). Of course praise for volunteers is merited, but doesn't the subject deserve something a little more substantial from our legislators?
A lot of public money is spent on volunteering and the voluntary sector - not always wisely. There are continuous reorganisations of government departments overseeing the sector. There are difficult issues to confront about how far volunteers should encroach on work that might otherwise be done by paid staff.
Yet there seems to be little real debate on any of these issues either within the sector, from the media, or from MPs.
One of the tenets of good volunteering management is that the best way to reward volunteers is to take them and their work seriously – praise only goes so far. Perhaps the same approach should be applied to the sector as a whole.
Posted by Tom Green ( 2:37 PM ) Link to this post Comments[1]
Posted by Matthew on June 13, 2006 at 11:46 AM GMT+00:00 #