People keep asking me whether I’m starting to wind down my activities and work in the last few months before the baby comes, but to be honest, if anything I’m doing more. It’s not ideally how I’d plan life to be, but I’m really pleased that after all my work trying to get The English Volunteering Project going, it is actually going to happen.
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 13
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 12
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 11
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 10
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 9
- What it takes to volunteer in Sweden: # 8
- Volunteering in Sweden: Networking
Because not only have we hit our FundedByMe fundraising target of 40,000kr (40,596kr to be precise), which means that Internetfonden are going to donate another 39,404kr more to enable us to hit our overall target of 80,000kr, but we have also been given funding by Postkodlotteriet (the Swedish Postcode Lottery).
Postkodlotteriet donates all its profits to good causes. Most of these are well established large organisations who work within Sweden. But they also have scope to support a small number of projects and organisations who either need help to start an area of work, or who work internationally. They liked the idea of The English Volunteering Project, and within a month we had met with them, put together an application, had that application approved by them (and the Swedish Gaming Board), and received a positive response that we were going to get the funding. This is incredibly fast, and I am SO grateful to the staff there for helping us through the process so efficiently and smoothly.
Our original target of 80,000kr would have enabled us to run the project in the most basic and simple way, relying entirely on voluntary support. The additional funding enables us to run it the way we want to – with printed materials, a launch event and a part time member of staff (me) to project manage getting the project off the ground and to work with the non-profit organisations. This last thing is particularly important as it is one thing to find people willing to volunteer, but quite another to find organisations who are willing to take on English-speaking volunteers. A lot of my time will be spent calling and meeting with non-profit organisations to encourage and support them to offer volunteering opportunities that can be done in English.
So, we now have a plan. Over the summer we have been developing an English section on the Volontärbyrån website, translating existing information and writing new material. In autumn we’ll be working with non-profit organisations to encourage them to post volunteering opportunities that can be done in English on the website. We will also be publicising the project and what it can offer. All this will all lead up to a formal launch event sometime in November.
A big thank you to everyone who donated money through the FundedByMe campaign – we really appreciate your support. There were over 2000 hits on the FundedByMe page over the course of the campaign, and it was really encouraging to see that so many people thought the project was interesting. Thanks also to everyone who has helped by providing encouragement, ideas, time and contacts. And of course, huge thanks must go to our two funders, Postkodlotteriet and Internetfonden. Things will now go quiet as Swedish summertime kicks in and I get busy trying to do as much on the project as possible before the baby arrives. But keep an eye out for us as in the autumn when the project will be properly up and running – something which I am very excited about.
Check back in a few weeks to hear more about Claire’s progress.
Claire Thomas was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Northern Ireland and has lived in Scotland, England, Germany and now Sweden (where she hopes to stay for a good long while). In this blog she shares her experience of setting up a project focused on helping non-Swedish speakers to find volunteering opportunities with non-profit organisations in Stockholm
If you are interested in the project you can contact Claire by email at [email protected]
Like us on Facebook to follow the project’s progress – go to www.facebook.com/englishvolunteering.
The project is part of Volontärbyrån www.volontarbyran.org
