Tim Day of WCVA's speech on timebanking, volunteering and internships.

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Volunteering Speech by Timothy Day, WCVA
We can achieve nothing without it and so much with it. We
can waste it on trivialities or invest it wisely. We can make it
or lose it but we cannot reclaim it when it has gone.
What is this most precious resource? It is time - and it is
time which volunteers and interns invest for personal
intrinsic and extrinsic rewards - and for positive results in
their activities and in their communities.
Volunteering is undertaken freely, by choice, to be of public
and community benefit and is not undertaken for financial
gain.
It is the 147 million hours of voluntary effort which is given
each year in Wales by 1.13 million volunteers with 420,000
people at the core.

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In addition (or overlapping), there are about 230,000
trustees or management group members of organisations.
About 46 per cent of volunteers also take on responsibilities
such as organising activities - as well as delivering them.
With public services under threat - and yet in greater
demand - in these straightened economic times - there is
increasing opportunity for every member of every
community to take responsibility for their individual and
collective wellbeing - for ensuring that services are planned
and provided through the giving of time, energy, skills and
enthusiasm.
Sometimes this is done by volunteers alone – volunteers
who are inspired to ‘just get on with it’ - but in many cases
volunteers are working as key contributors to the co-
ordinated ‘co-design and co-delivery’ of services within or

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alongside organisations in the public, private and third
sectors. Either way - volunteers have an important role to
play in the provision of public services – particularly at a time
when there is an increase in demand due to poverty and a
lack of resources.
However, even if our ‘standard of living’ is falling - and it is
falling for many of us - that is not an excuse to allow our
‘quality of life’ to suffer needlessly.
Quality of life partly stems from the personal rewards we
derive from our activities:
making friends;
a sense of belonging;
enjoyment of purposeful activity;
experience and skills gained;
building confidence and self esteem

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and giving mutual support.
All these are the intrinsic rewards of volunteering to the
individual - not to mention the huge benefits to services,
organisations and the wider community. Many of these
intrinsic rewards may manifest themselves extrinsically too -
such as through strengthening the position of an individual
volunteer to find paid work when that becomes available.
Talking of paid work, let’s address the anxiety around
volunteers taking on work previously done by paid staff. Rob
Jackson and Lynn Blackadder drew a useful distinction in
the article they wrote for The Guardian last year. They
distinguish between ‘Displacement’ and ‘Replacement’.
Displacement is when paid staff make way for – are
displaced - so that volunteers can fill their roles.

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Replacement is when work previously done by paid staff
is reallocated to volunteers, that is to say, volunteers
replace employees as the means of delivering a service.
This is a subtle distinction and inevitably many people may
feel very uncomfortable about ‘displacement’ - but
‘replacement’ may often be one very effective means of
maintaining a service which would otherwise have to be
discontinued as a result of funding cuts - and at a time of
greater demand on a public service due to poverty.
Naturally, when people are in poverty and some are
struggling to find work, we need to find ways to assist - and
one is through providing internships. Internships are for a
defined period of time - to undertake a specific piece of work
which is of benefit to the intern and to the organisation.
These may be paid or unpaid and may take place within
third sector, public or private organisations. Unpaid

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internships are a form of volunteering. WCVA runs an
internship scheme called Explore! for the third sector in
Wales which is designed to bring about many benefits to the
intern, including:
Hands on experience which can be included in a CV
The practising and refining of skills
Trying out a type of work to see if it is what the intern
wants to do in the longer term
Broadening life experience
Organisations, of course, also benefit from engaging an
Intern through:
The availability of volunteers with skills which can be
utilised creatively and beneficially for the organisation -
through structured projects
The grasping of an opportunity to complete the
organisation’s ‘wish list’ of activities and outcomes
Showcasing the third sector as a career choice
Targeted work - by a carefully chosen intern enabling
greater innovation - exploring ideas - gaining a better

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understanding of needs, successes and areas for
improvement
So, internships should be mutually beneficial relationships.
Poverty is hard to endure and presents huge challenges to
individuals, families, communities, public services and the
wider economy. However, some of those challenges present
real opportunities for volunteers to enhance their own and
other people’s ‘quality of life’ through the investment of time
and energy into worthwhile activity.
I began by saying that time is our most precious resource so
I will now hand over to Becky, our next speaker, to talk to
you about time-banking.