Wales

This year's Wales Volunteer of the Year Awards are open for nomination until 23rd April. The five categories are adult, young people (under 25 years), trustee, green volunteer and groups, http://www.wcva.org.uk/news/dsp_news.cfm?newsid=1443. (The official link http://www.wcva.org.uk/voy is currently on 2009.)

BBC1's Panorama looked at the impact of the new Vetting and Barring Scheme, run by the new Independent Safeguarding Authority, in its programme on Monday (8th February), http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qs991. Volunteering England published survey results on the same day showing high levels of confusion amongst volunteer involving organisations on how the scheme is to operate.

The Goodmoves website for Wales is rebranding as a bilingual website for third sector recruitment at http://www.recruit3.org.uk. It is a joint venture between Wales Council for Voluntary Action and Big Issue Cymru.

This week saw the major social enterprise conference Voice10 in Cardiff. The top news item there was the launch of the Social Enterprise Mark, originally developed in south west England but now to be spread across Britain. More about the Mark at its website http://www.socialenterprisemark.org.uk - the hope is that the logo will become as well recognised as that for Fairtrade, indicating a genuine social enterprise in this case.

The Welsh young volunteers project GwirVol has a revamped website at http://www.gwirvol.org, for volunteers aged 16-25 and the groups that involve them, or plan to. WCVA news item at http://www.wcva.org.uk/news/dsp_news.cfm?newsid=1421&display_sitedeptid=21

From WCVA's Network Wales 395:

Welsh voluntary groups affected by the recession are being urged to make use of the "very important" Code of Practice for Funding the Third Sector. This sets out the key principles that underpin the Welsh Assembly Government's funding methods, including security of funding through longer term commitments

A Welsh Social Enterprise Coalition is expected to be officially launched at the Voice10 event in Cardiff at the start of February.
A web address is already live at http://www.welshsec.org, see Social Enterprise magazine for more.

Welsh umbrella body WCVA has a Climate Change Fund which can give grants from £200 to £2000 to voluntary organisations in Wales which are yet to engage with the issue. This could be for activities such as exploring the impact of climate change on your activities, set up recycling facilities, link up with groups that already have an environmental remit, or raising awareness.