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Amol Rajan
Amol Rajan is Assistant Editor on the Comment desk at The Independent. He was previously a news reporter and Sports News Correspondent, and writes columns for The Liberal and The Salisbury Review.
A press release drops into my inbox telling me that volunteering is taking off. It coumes from the extraordinary Youthnet website.
Every hack should be sceptical of press releases from organisations that seem to applaud their own motives, but I can happily say I think this one is different.
The release claims "The number of applications to volunteer more than doubled in 2008 across the UK... Applications collected by www.do-it.org.uk, which offers opportunities from over 300 Volunteer Centres, as well as major charities and grassroots organisations, recorded a rise of 115% from 2007 to 2008, with the number of applications topping 60,000".
Even if the facts are incorrect (and I have no substantial reason to doubt them), I suspect the trend identified is real.
I happen to know that one of the few morally laudable consequences of this appalling recession is a surge in the number of people taking up volunteering. Thousands of people who have been laid off are deciding to volunteer while they are between jobs. Apart from getting them out of the house, it bolsters their CV hugely.
Youthnet (who aren't paying me to write this), are doing an astonishing job of making volunteering fashionable, and these latest figures are testament to their growing importance.
Every hack should be sceptical of press releases from organisations that seem to applaud their own motives, but I can happily say I think this one is different.
The release claims "The number of applications to volunteer more than doubled in 2008 across the UK... Applications collected by www.do-it.org.uk, which offers opportunities from over 300 Volunteer Centres, as well as major charities and grassroots organisations, recorded a rise of 115% from 2007 to 2008, with the number of applications topping 60,000".
Even if the facts are incorrect (and I have no substantial reason to doubt them), I suspect the trend identified is real.
I happen to know that one of the few morally laudable consequences of this appalling recession is a surge in the number of people taking up volunteering. Thousands of people who have been laid off are deciding to volunteer while they are between jobs. Apart from getting them out of the house, it bolsters their CV hugely.
Youthnet (who aren't paying me to write this), are doing an astonishing job of making volunteering fashionable, and these latest figures are testament to their growing importance.
