Volunteer awareness week begins

Press, 26 September 1989, Page 6

Volunteer awareness week begins

By

CLARE BARRY

Volunteers should never say, “I’m only a volunteer,” says the president of the International Association for Volunteer Effort, Mrs Margaret Bell. Mrs Bell and the secretary of the association, Ms Margaret Clayton, are in Christchurch this week as guests of the Canterbury Volunteer Centre, which celebrates its first birthday this week. They are both from the New South Wales

Volunteer Centre. Volunteer recognition certificates were presented at the launch of volunteer awareness week at the Red Cross Centre yesterday. Mrs Bell said there was a real need for volunteers to be acknowledged and recognised as doing worth-while work. It was vital “volunteerism” was talked about and well publicised, she said. People needed to be recruited, interviewed, satisfactorily placed in employment, and thanked for their work.

“If we do that we release into the community energy like ,we've never seen before,” said Mrs Bell. Volunteer centres were “breaking out like measles” around the world, with 600 centres in the United States and 350 in Britain, she said. New Zealand has two volunteer centres, in Christchurch and Dunedin, and there are efforts being made to establish centres in Auckland and Wellington.