A one day workshop on youth volunteering involving a lot of young people will be one of two national events to be held during Volunteer Awareness Week 2010. The second will be the release of the report on the results of the recent survey of those who manage volunteers. Volunteering NZ (VNZ) is involved in hosting both events.

Each has an important connection to the theme for the Week, Volunteering across the Generations. Young people are an important generation - they are volunteers now and needed for the future. Managers of volunteers face challenges in recruiting and managing volunteers across all generations and these will be highlighted in the survey report.

A key objective of the Awareness Week is to encourage more people to volunteer - "raising people not money". Organisations participating in the Week can be expected to highlight the opportunities for volunteering across the generations, how different forms of volunteering appeal to particular generational groups and various examples of intergenerational volunteering such as family volunteering.

VNZ's two national events and the many local events that will take place offer a wide range of potential media stories, including issues organisations face in attracting volunteers from different age groups, encouraging such concepts as family volunteering and so on.

The Youth Volunteering workshop will highlight the perspectives of young people and what organisations need to do to involve then in their programmes. Young people have lead roles in organising the workshop. On the day around 20 young people will join them and work with senior representatives from a number of organisations to identify reasons that more young people do not volunteer and what concrete actions the organisations need to take to change this. The results will also be passed on to a much wider audience. The workshop will be held in Wellington on Tuesday 22 June.

The report of survey of managers of volunteer programmes is being jointly released by VNZ and Victoria University on Wednesday 23 June. Hon Tariana Turia, Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector will be present and speak at the event. The survey was undertaken by Victoria over the summer months with active support from VNZ. Over 800 responses were received with a good spread geographically and over the many sectors with volunteer programmes.

More information about what is happening during the Week will be found on the Events Calendar on VNZ's website www.volunteeringnz.org.nz -click on VAW Events in the top right hand corner. Information about local events may be available from the regional volunteer centres.