Volunteer Awareness Week

Volunteer Awareness Week provides New Zealanders with a chance to acknowledge the excellent work done by our many volunteers and discover opportunities to get involved in their communities.

Annual focus

As the co-ordinating agency for the Week, Volunteering NZ provides information and resources to assist participation in the week. Volunteer Centres play leading roles within their communities - arranging a variety of events and helping to publicise the activities of local agencies in their district. 

VNZ encourages all organisations that have volunteers involved in their programmes to run activities for the Week and identify opportunities to acknowledge the contribution of volunteers, demonstrate their work, and encourage people from all generations to join their services.

Goals
A key objective of the Awareness Week is to encourage more people to volunteer - "raising people, not money". Volunteer Awareness Week is a great time for first-timers to give volunteering a go - whether it be in sport, the arts, civil defence, visiting the elderly or simply helping a neighbour.

The number of different voluntary roles available is vast, so there is something for everyone! And anyone can be a volunteer - no matter their age, race or gender.

To find out more about some of the volunteering opportunities available, visit www.volunteernow.org.nz or call 0800 VOL CNTR.

Origins
The incentive for an Awareness Week came from New Zealand’s volunteer centres in the 1980s and was picked up as a national event in the 1990s. Since the International Year of Volunteers in 2001, Volunteer Awareness Week has continued to grow. Now Volunteer Awareness Week is celebrated throughout New Zealand with a range of activities and events in the week beginning on the third Sunday in June. (Prior to 2007, Volunteer Awareness Week was held in March.)

In past years, awareness week activities have included MPs getting involved in community volunteering, ‘Mayoral Challenges’, employee volunteering challenges and various award ceremonies recognising the contribution of existing volunteers.

Information on each year's activities is collated by Volunteering NZ and available in advance of the week at www.volunteeringnz.org.nz or from 0800 VOL CNTR.

One focus of Volunteer Awareness Week (VAW) activity is the news stories, press releases and media activity promoting VAW, however it is important to remember that VAW is mainly about celebrating volunteer activity. 

The lists on the page below DO NOT represent ALL media coverage of VAW, but only that captured through various media monitoring activities.  It is likely that television, radio and community newspaper coverage is under-represented in these summaries.  Stories and publications are listed to give a 'flavour' of the media coverage, rather than provide a comprehensive collection of all news.

The individual story links originally connected to various media websites, however over time the original stories are likely to be deleted from their host sites as they become out of date.  We apologise for any inconvenience, however this is beyond our control, and we cannot update broken links. (Many stories can still be accessed via the Newstext knowledgebase if your organisation subscribes to that service.)