Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Youth volunteering

The youth volunteering scheme Millennium Volunteers has been operating in Herts since 2000 and has been managed by Watford YMCA. Although there have been parts of the county where MV has struggled, it has generally been regarded as a Hertfordshire success.

MV is now winding up and when bidders were invited for the successor V programme, it was widely expected that the Herts MV would simply transform itself into V. So it came as something of a surprise when Watford YMCA’s bid to V was turned down. A new bidding round is opening for delivering a youth volunteering scheme with six members of staff and £250,000 pa. The deadline for initial "expressions of interest" is this Friday.

I had intended to spend today at home working on the HIC development plan. I did make some progress on this. But I also spent a long long time on the telephone talking to lots of different people about the future of youth volunteering in Herts.

In retrospect it was inevitable that I would get involved: Watford YMCA are members of Watford CVS, I am chair of the Hertfordshire Infrastructure Consortium, Watford CVS operates a Volunteer Centre, and our Volunteer Centre co-ordinator (Helen Price) is Youth Volunteering lead for the Volunteering Herts consortium. Perhaps I should have involved myself much earlier.

Watford YMCA will of course put in another expression of interest and seek to revise their bid. Today it became clear that the Volunteering Herts consortium of Volunteer Centres would put in an expression of interest against Watford YMCA.

For a time, I felt that Watford CVS should also put in an expression of interest. My logic was simple: Watford YMCA and the Volunteer Centres will have to work together to deliver the V programme; if neither is willing to accept the other as lead, then a third party is needed to bring them together. I thought that Watford CVS might play this role of “honest broker”.

Another potential “honest broker” in this process is North Herts CVS. They have the experience of being fund holder and Responsible Body for the Hertfordshire Infrastructure Consortium, and they can also more easily act on behalf of the Consortium. Accordingly, at some point in the day, Watford CVS withdrew its interest.

Putting in three expressions of interest is no great problem as it keeps options open. But if in January Hertfordshire puts in three competing bids, we will give every appearance of being a county in crisis. After the success of the MV programme this would be very unfortunate. It is still very clear to me that Hertfordshire needs to get behind a single strong bid for the V programme. Perhaps this will be possible in the New Year.

Throughout the day, Helen was overseeing a Christmas event at Watford’s premier shopping centre The Harlequin. This event involved organising teams of volunteers to do Christmas gift wrapping to promote volunteering and solicit donations for local charities. Helen was also the Volunteering Herts lead on Youth Volunteering. And she also had a 5:15 call booked with Andrew Simmonds, the head of Hertfordshire Connexions and chair of the Hertfordshire Youth Volunteeirng Consortium. Helen had a pretty torrid day and I was very impressed by how she coped with all the pressures and all the different hats.