IHC launches new website for volunteers

International Volunteer Day
5 December 2009

Media release
23 November 2009

IHC launches new website for volunteers

IHC has launched a new website for volunteers with a competition for stories about volunteering.

To mark International Volunteer Day (5 December) people with intellectual disabilities and volunteers are being encouraged to write in with their stories.

The best stories will be featured on the new website www.volunteer4IHC.org.nz and prizes include a 2009 Hewlett Packard laptop sponsored by Datacom Systems, Wellington, and a Sony Digital Cybershot W Series digital camera with starter kit and carry bag.
The website features personal accounts of friends and friendships and is designed to raise the profile of IHC’s volunteer programme. The site is for existing volunteers and people who want to get to know someone with an intellectual disability.

“It has real life stories that are regularly updated,” says IHC’s National Manager of Volunteering, Caroline Barnes.

The site also provides a moderated forum for volunteers to exchange information.

Caroline says this provides a way for volunteers to chat. “They can share experiences and perhaps even learn strategies from one another,” she says.

The forum will be open so that prospective volunteers can find out first-hand what it’s like to be a volunteer.

“IHC can tell people about being a volunteer but ultimately it’s those who do it who understand what it’s really like,” she says.

The IHC Volunteer Programme is a one-to-one programme that operates in local communities. It’s about making friends with a person with an intellectual disability.

“The programme is flexible,” Caroline says. “How that friendship develops is worked out between the volunteer and the person with the disability.”

There’s a potential benefit to all volunteers from better networking, including new opportunities. “By getting to know other volunteers online, they might find another pair in their community that they and their friend can link up with and do things together,” she says.

IHC has more than 450 volunteers working in communities through the country. There are many more people with intellectual disabilities in those communities who would like a volunteer.

All volunteers receive full training and ongoing support is provided by local volunteer coordinators. If you would like to join the IHC Volunteer Programme contact IHC on 0800 442 442 or volunteering@ihc.org.nz

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Night at the Museum
Matthew Tucker is a fan of museums – but only after hours when no one else is around.

Matthew has a range of disabilities, including autism, and his impaired mobility and vision make crowded places difficult for him.

That’s when Dianne Northcott turns out to be the perfect friend. By day Dianne is an educator at the Auckland Museum. After hours, the IHC volunteer is Matthew’s guide to the exhibits.

Matthew visits the museum with Dianne at the end of a working day. He gets to do the sorts of things that only school groups do and he loves being there outside public hours.

Dianne says he likes to look up things in the archives. She thinks it’s the process rather than the outcome that interests him. “It’s clearly what he loves doing” she says.

Matthew says he is going to start taking a notebook to write down what he discovers “because I forget”.

Dianne is one of the first friends Matthew has had who hasn’t been organised by his family. “Dianne is a good friend," says Matthew.

ENDS

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