In March 2005, the Russell Commission issued their recommendations to the Home Office on how to engage more young people in volunteering. Central to the recommendations was the recognition and accreditation of young volunteers, with UK Youth’s Youth Achievement Awards highlighted as the key route to accreditation.
In May 2006, v was launched - an independent charity set up to ensure that Ian Russell’s vision for volunteering became a reality. UK Youth continues to work closely with v from the start. We were contracted to deliver the Ready Steady Go capacity building events in all 9 regions of England which involved us delivering 9 training days introducing workers to accrediting young volunteers through the Youth Achievement Awards, setting up a mentoring project groups experienced in delivering the Awards to new groups as well as offering consultancy support to agencies in order to get them started.
v have also committed to supporting groups to access the Youth Achievement Awards to accredit young volunteers through their grants programme. To date, almost 30 national, regional and local organisations have signed up to the award via this route. A number of other organisations have received match funding from v to do the same. In the next two years over 7000 young volunteers will have had the opportunity to have their volunteering efforts recognised and accredited in this way through the first round of v grants alone.
If you are currently looking at accreditation options for your young volunteers, please click here for more information.
For Frequently Asked Questions, please click here.
To find out more about our Youth Volunteering and Youth Achievement Awards Seminar Days in June 2007, click here
To download the 'More Ways To Use the Youth Achievement Awards with Young Volunteers Booklet', please click here
To download the Introduction to Working with Young Volunteer Leaflet', click here
For more information about v visit: www.wearev.com
v Challenge Certificate
The Award Group should present their peers with their Challenge certificate once they feel that the challenge and the evidence is complete. These can then be included with the young person's portfolio. The certificates give young people a feeling of progression and achievement on what can sometimes seem like quite a long haul of a commitment. We recommend that you print the certificates onto card of a minimum of 120 grams density. To download the v Challenge Certificate, please click on the link below:
