Luton Lives - 6 staff, 500 volunteers
each year
Reaching the whole community
Luton Lives is a partnership project. It aims to engage
individuals, voluntary groups, businesses and the whole
community in Luton in a range of community activities,
with the aim of benefiting both them and the town as
a whole.
Beth Follini, the Project Director says: 'Luton is
a very diverse community with areas of deprivation and
high unemployment. Diversity in volunteering is important
so that we reflect the community groups
that volunteers often work with. So we've worked to
ensure that our publicity targets all the communities
in Luton – we're running a recruitment campaign
which focuses on lesbians and gay men, people from ethnic
minority backgrounds, older people and people with disabilities.'
Drew Pickard, a 33-year-old designer, saw one of their
ads: 'I'd been thinking for some time about volunteering
for an HIV charity because I have so many friends who've
been affected and I'd like to educate myself. But until
I saw the posters in the local gay pubs, I'd never got
round to it. I was surprised to see a poster that seemed
specifically to target the lesbian
and gay community - it's nice to get away from the image
of the housewife volunteering at Oxfam.'
Drew continues, 'It's important to diversify
the target groups for volunteering so people can see
that the volunteer base is diverse itself. The gay and
lesbian community are targeted in the national gay press
for London based HIV-related volunteering, but not usually
for local groups like this.'
Beth Follini agrees: 'We've had a terrific response
to this poster and seen a huge increase in the number
of lesbians and gay men coming through our doors. We've
also had queries from other volunteering agencies all
over the UK about running similar campaigns, and we're
currently in the process of getting our volunteering
leaflet translated into the five main Asian languages.
'Diversity is important - and as well recruiting volunteers
from different groups, it's about encouraging mainstream
charities to open up services to those
communities and attract a diverse range of volunteers
themselves.'
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