Saltwell Park will be hosting a major Festival of Volunteering this summer as part of Gateshead Council’s Year of Volunteers.
The festival, which will involve voluntary organisations and charities from throughout Gateshead, will highlight the work of all volunteers in the area, celebrate their achievements and provide a shop front for local charitable organisations who are seeking to attract new helpers.
The event will signal a week of activities in the park as part of the UK-wide ‘Volunteers Week’ (1st – 7th June). Events will be centred on a large marquee to be erected close to Saltwell Park’s boating lake.
More than 20 voluntary organisations have already committed themselves to attending, including Birtley Children's Centre, Transport Unlimited, Gateshead Youth Offending Team and Gateshead Council Countryside Rangers. Further details of the week-long event will be released later this month.
Coun David Napier, Gateshead Council’s Cabinet member for communities, says: “Gateshead’s Year of Volunteers is all about enabling local people to make a real, and recognised, contribution by helping in their community.
“Volunteering is something that can have huge benefits for the individual and the wider community, and the range of volunteering opportunities available to people is extremely broad - from coaching a local football team, reading with children at school, sitting on the board of a charity or a residents committee, or helping at a local festival.”
“This week-long event in Saltwell Park will allow people to see what volunteers are already doing in Gateshead and, hopefully, encourage lots more local people to do something themselves.”
Gateshead’s Year of Volunteers is led jointly by Gateshead Council and the Gateshead Voluntary Organisations Council (GVOC). The over-arching aim of the year is to stimulate the idea of volunteering and encourage yet more people to do something in their community.
‘Gateshead Volunteers’ is one of the six ‘big ideas’ contained in Gateshead’s ambitious Sustainable Community Strategy, “Vision 2030”. The strategy is a major statement of intent to make Gateshead the best place to live, work and visit in the north.
By 2015, Gateshead Council and their partners are aiming for more than 1 million hours of voluntary work to be carried out in Gateshead each year, with local people, schools and colleges and more than 500 businesses regularly involved in volunteering by 2020.
Any organisation interested in taking part in the week-long celebration should contact Ian Armstrong, Community Based Services, Gateshead Old Town Hall on (0191) 433 6910.