1Thanks for coming everyone.
2OK, so this meeting is for new staff and staff who haven't been involved with our volunteering projects yet.
3So basically, the idea is that we allow staff to give up some of their work time
4to help on various charity projects to benefit the local community.
5We've been doing this for the last five years and it's been very successful.
6Participating doesn't necessarily involve a huge time commitment.
7The company will pay for eight hours of your time.
8That can be used over one or two days all at once,
9or spread over several months throughout the year.
10There are some staff who enjoy volunteering so much
11they also give up their own free time for a couple of hours every week.
12It's completely up to you.
13Obviously, many people will have family commitments and aren't as available as other members of staff.
14Feedback from staff has been overwhelmingly positive.
15Because they felt they were doing something really useful,
16nearly everyone agreed that volunteering made them feel more motivated at work.
17They also liked building relationships with the people in the local community and felt valued by them.
18One or two people also said it was a good thing to have on their CVs.
19One particularly successful project last year was the Get Working Project.
20This was aimed at helping unemployed people in the area get back to work.
21Our staff were able to help them improve their telephone skills,
22such as writing down messages and speaking with confidence to potential customers,
23which they had found quite difficult.
24This is something many employers look for in job applicants -
25and something we all do without even thinking about, every day at work.
26We've got an exciting new project starting this year.
27Up until now, we've mainly focused on projects to do with education and training.
28And we'll continue with our reading project in schools and our work with local charities.
29But we've also agreed to help out on a conservation project in Redfern Park.
30So if any of you fancy being outside and getting your hands dirty, this is the project for you.
31I also want to mention the annual Digital Inclusion Day, which is coming up next month.
32The aim of this is to help older people keep up with technology.
33And this year, instead of hosting the event in our own training facility,
34we're using the ICT suite at Hill College,
35as it can hold far more people.
36We've invited over 60 people from the Silver Age Community Centre to take part,
37so we'll need a lot of volunteers to help with this event.
38If you're interested in taking part,
39please go to the volunteering section of our website and complete the relevant form.
40We won't be providing any training for this
41but you'll be paired with an experienced volunteer if you've never done it before.
42By the way, don't forget to tell your manager about any volunteering activities you decide to do.
43The participants on the Digital Inclusion Day really benefited.
44The majority were in their seventies,
45though some were younger and a few were even in their nineties!
46Quite a few owned both a computer and a mobile phone,
47but these tended to be outdated models.
48They generally knew how to do simple things, like send texts,
49but weren't aware of recent developments in mobile phone technology.
50A few were keen to learn but most were quite dismissive at first -
51they couldn't see the point of updating their skills.
52But that soon changed.
53The feedback was very positive.
54The really encouraging thing was that participants all said
55they felt much more confident about using social media to keep in touch with their grandchildren,
56who prefer this form of communication to phoning or sending emails.
57A lot of them also said playing online games would help them make new friends and keep their brains active.
58They weren't that impressed with being able to order their groceries online,
59as they liked going out to the shops,
60but some said it would come in handy if they were ill or the weather was really bad.
61One thing they asked about was using tablets for things like reading newspapers -
62some people had been given tablets as presents but had never used them,
63so that's something we'll make sure we include this time...