The last 12 months has been an unprecedented time for all of us as we navigate the new world which is Covid-19. At TimeBank we have a rich history of 20 years of volunteering to support some of those who are most vulnerable in our society. None of this is possible without the dedication of our amazing volunteers, many of whom have been volunteering with TimeBank for a number of years. When our Talking Together project ended in early 2020, and with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we needed to find new ways of reaching and supporting our beneficiaries when face-to-face meetings were  no ..read more

As winter makes way for spring and eventually summer, TimeBank’s employee volunteering programme is starting to pick up as restrictions ease. Early on in the pandemic we made the decision to suspend face-to-face employee volunteering. However, businesses were still keen to find ways for their employees to volunteer so we built on our experience of online volunteering to offer a programme of activities to help the many beneficiary groups facing social isolation at this difficult time. Zoom has become our delivery mechanism of choice. One of our most popular corporate volunteering opportunities ..read more

I have been working on the Time Together Covid-19 befriending project at TimeBank for a few months now and it’s been a great project to be a part of. Following on from the success of our Time Together project, we’ve launched an adapted version offering remote support to refugees and asylum seekers across Birmingham. Many refugees and asylum seekers in the City were experiencing social isolation prior to the pandemic and most of their support was delivered face to face. During the lockdown, their isolation may increase, particularly if they can no longer access their support networks. Time Toge ..read more

Like most organisations, we had some exciting plans for the summer when the UK was hit by the Coronavirus pandemic. In late 2019, TimeBank was awarded a grant from MiFriendly Cities to deliver a project as part of its Share My Language initiative. Following on from the success of our Talking Together English-teaching project, we designed a six week course for residents across Birmingham who wanted to improve their English language skills, build their confidence and meet new people, through the theme of food and celebration. We designed group discussions, planned trips to the city markets and ..read more

Following my stint as a GamesMaker in the glorious days of 2012 (still going on about it), I was so inspired by what society can achieve by mobilising people to come together, and the power of volunteering, that I was moved to do more. The experience inspired me to apply to be a trustee at TimeBank, the national volunteering charity. TimeBank exists to provide an inclusive and rewarding volunteering experience whilst transforming the lives of the people we support. I wouldn’t dream of comparing what TimeBank does and offers with the experience of those volunteering at London 2012.  But th ..read more

A belated Happy New Year to everyone – although I am sure 2021 hasn’t been the start we would have hoped for. 2020 was TimeBank’s 20th anniversary and we could not have foreseen what a different year it was for the world.  As a charity we had to quickly adapt and stop all our face to face volunteering and move solely to online video delivery through platforms like Zoom. Unfortunately, this resulted in a significant reduction in income, something many other charities have also experienced, and we sadly had to say goodbye to some much-respected colleagues and projects. Back in 2019 T ..read more

Since lockdown began in March 2020, we’ve been looking for ways to continue to support our former Talking Together English language learners and delivery partners from a distance. While this has not always been easy due to the struggles of delivering virtual support (see our Catalyst report for more details), there have many moments of joy and success throughout delivering the TimeBank Tell Us wellbeing programme. The TimeBank Tell Us sessions, funded by Big Lottery, combined informal ESOL sessions with workshops discussing mental and physical wellbeing. We trained former Talking Together volu ..read more

For the last five years we have recruited, trained and supported volunteers to deliver conversational English language classes to Asian women with little or no English. The hope was that with improved conversational English, the women would feel less socially isolated. In the last year 1,800 learners attended our classes and we delivered over 7,000 hours of volunteering. All those classes were delivered face-to-face with small grass roots organisations. The onset of Covid-19 meant we immediately took the decision to stop classes to protect volunteers, learners and delivery partners. Yet we kne ..read more

It has been a couple of months since my last blog and a lot has happened at TimeBank. As we navigate Covid-19 and our new approach to volunteering delivery we are settling in as best we can to the new normal with the ever-changing guidelines we must all adhere to. As mentioned in my last blog, we made the decision very early on to work from home as a team. As a result we gave up paying for offices that we were not using, instead using them for storage in order to save charitable funds so we can use them to deliver our volunteering projects instead. Our Shoulder to Shoulder Online project comes ..read more

As I’m sure is the case for many of you, I’ve had to become somewhat of a Zoom pro over the last few months. In the pre-Covid world, all our employee volunteering opportunities took place in person, but from March, we began the move to virtual team volunteering. We had already embraced the online volunteering world with our mentoring projects, Shoulder to Shoulder and Looking Ahead, but this would be the first time we’d attempted to make employee volunteering virtual. Though some of our opportunities, such as environmental volunteering, couldn’t be taken online, we knew it could work for our ..read more