My Department has collated information received following a Call for Input (CFI) exercise last December that was designed as a first step towards developing a draft national volunteering strategy. This material will be presented to a National Advisory Group on Volunteering, representative of relevant stakeholders, that is scheduled to have its inaugural meeting today, 29 May 2019. I look forward to progressing, in partnership, to the next phase in the development of a Strategy on Volunteering.
Among the areas that stakeholders were asked to provide their views on were:
- a definition of volunteering;
- a shared vision for the future of Irish volunteering;
- the objectives of a draft volunteering strategy;
- the volunteering community
- governance and funding issues;
- various challenges and opportunities that exist within volunteering today; and
- monitoring, measuring and evaluating the impact of volunteering in society.
My Department is making arrangements to have the submissions received from the public published online shortly as outlined in the CFI.