Bendigo Volunteer Resource Centre provides volunteer support services across the Greater Bendigo region.

We currently have online support services for volunteers looking to participate in short-term or spontaneous volunteering while helping community organisation to adapt their volunteer program to life during and after COVID19.  

National Student Volunteer Week 2020 (#NSVW20) runs from 10 – 16 August. Celebrating #NSVW20 is an opportunity to acknowledge the impact that student volunteers make through volunteering. 

#NSVW20 is also an opportunity to enable students to try volunteering!

National Student Volunteer Week aspires to challenge and celebrate young people who are striving to make change through volunteering.

NSVW encourages meaningful and innovative student engagement to help students realise how much of a difference they can make; while also changing the way they volunteer to be more creative and genuine in their help and care for others.

During August,  we acknowledge the contribution to society of our young people by:

Celebrating, promoting, and building support for student volunteering

Encouraging discussion and innovation so that volunteering becomes more creative and genuine

Supporting stronger relationships between the education and non-profit sectors

Building the next generation of volunteers to help the community

Volunteering seeks to develop friendships, a feeling of belonging, a sense of being valued in your community and an opportunity to develop supportive social networks which are important factors influencing our general health and wellbeing!

Register to become a volunteer here

Update on COVID-19

BVRC wish to assure the community that we are still operating via telephone, email, and online inquiries for anyone who wishes to connect with us.

Our skilled team is available to support Manager, Coordinators and Leaders of Volunteers to adapt the changing volunteer environment to help people to be part of the solutions in meeting community needs.

We are currently  hosting monthly Volunteer Leadership forums through zoom video conferencing to:

• Provide support to managers, coordinators and leaders of volunteers
• Discuss together ways to move forward and how to adapt to life during and after COVID 19
• Discuss avenues for new & potential partnerships – post COVID – sharing volunteers
• Identifying who will be available to volunteer
• How can your organisation adapt the program to meet the needs of the community and your volunteers?
• Tips & guides to best practice approaches to volunteer management tin line with National Standards for volunteer involvement.
• Peer support – share vision for volunteering sector.

Volunteer Leadership forum dates :

• Tuesday 18 August 10am
• Tuesday 15 September 10am

Register your interest in attending with Helen manager@bgovolunteers.org.au

Volunteers and Community Organisations are vital to our community and will be needed more than ever on the other side of this global crisis.

The BVRC has developed a safe volunteering fact sheet to assist volunteers and organisations throughout COVID-19 and is available to download here.

We encourage you all to:

Get to know your neighbours

Look out for friends and family

Support each other and maintain contact with the community through any way possible including phone tress and social media,

Put a rainbow picture or teddy in your window for people to see as they walk past

Keep your routines

Be kind, be thankful and be patient

For the most up to date and current information on the corona virus, please go to https://www.health.gov.au/

Volunteers helping make a difference during COVID-19

Anyone from the Bendigo Community knows we are a community that binds together during something as big as COVID-19.

Below, we would like to highlight things that are being done, and details about how you can help!

‘MAKE IT HAPPEN – VOLUNTEER NOW’

The Bendigo Volunteer Resource Centre kindly supports the Help Your Neighbour campaign to assist our community in surviving the current COVID-19 virus and come out the other side more equipped, knowledgeable and ready to get involved again!

What is Help Your Neighbour?

Help Your Neighbour is a community campaign to encourage Central Victorians to come together and help their neighbours with simple acts of kindness in the face of the COVID-19.

During hard times neighbourhoods and communities have always found ways to work with each other, share resources, check on the vulnerable and provide support for the greater good. We know there are lots of people in our community doing great things to help others and we want to show people that it’s easy and practical to do the same. Help Your Neighbour promotes positive actions and connectivity that our community needs in order to be resilient, and to best withstand the risk, uncertainty and disruption of COVID-19.

Visit Help Your Neighbour on Facebook or download the flyer here