1,000th volunteer placed by Buckinghamshire Volunteer Matching Service
The scheme celebrate a year of matching shortly after
The Buckinghamshire Volunteer Matching Service celebrated a year of matching shortly after.
The 1,000th volunteer has been placed by the Buckinghamshire Volunteer Matching Service (BVMS) after a year of the scheme.
The Volunteer Matching Service is run by Community Impact Bucks in partnership with Buckinghamshire Council and The Clare Foundation, and was set up in Spring 2020 to support local communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, recovery periods and any local outbreaks that may arise.
Locals fill out a form, where they can highlight specific skills or areas they want to volunteer in.
Cheryl is a volunteer at the scheme, who places the 1,000th match:
"We could see it was ticking up and we were wondering who would be to one to tick it over to 4 figures.
"I was very lucky to be the person to have that conversation and it happened just before we'd been operating for 12 months.
"The whole thing was not about the numbers so it was more the icing on the cake?
"Not only have we been able to provide a quality service but we've been able to do it at scale... So that was nice."
Since it began the scheme has collected some impressive numbers:
- 128 volunteers to frontline COVID response like delivering PPE and medicine and helping in food banks.
- 180 volunteer telephone befrienders to make calls to elderly and disabled people or those required to shield.
- 85 volunteers to support vital charity and voluntary services e.g. Lindengate, a mental health charity that has been supporting NHS staff, key workers and people who have been bereaved.
- 86 car park marshals for vaccination sites across the county.
- 74 COVID Test Distributer volunteers placed with Buckinghamshire Council to help door-to-door COVID-19 testing.
- 56 volunteers to help in our hospitals with Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.