Contributing to the Community

During 2020, the community played a critical role in helping to make sure that people’s essential needs were met. Support included shopping and medicines, providing free meals, helping to care for pets and lessening the impact of enforced isolation.

In 2021, community action will continue to play a big part in helping us to recover from this pandemic. In addition to the essential and urgent needs of individuals, many organisations are also needing help to reorganise so that they can continue to deliver much needed support online and, when and where appropriate, in properly managed socially distanced spaces.

The need to completely change established ways of working continues to be a major challenge for us all, and a wide range of skills is needed to ensure that the infrastructure of the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector (VCSE) can support the scale of additional need.

Voluntary Action North Somerset (VANS) runs an Online Volunteer Centre to match community contributors/volunteers with the organisations that need help, and we want to understand how we can best help existing and prospective volunteers in the coming months. If you would like to register as a community contributor/volunteer, you can do so at vans.vcbroker.org.uk/volunteer/register