Category Events | VCS Cymru

July 10, 2017July 12, 2017 by Jo Harry

Pave the Way, Sherman 5 and BBC Get Creative Event April 2017

In April, Pave the Way volunteers joined Guy O’Donnell, the Sherman 5 team and lots of other organisations to Get Creative.

We went behind the scenes and onto the stage which was set up for City Road Stories, and we got to sit in the Studio which was showing Killology. It was very hard to resist touching the props ……

City Road Stories was there, we got to add comments on a huge map of City Road. Needless to say the section around Poets’ Corner / PC’s / Tut & Shive was full of interesting memories …

The amazing Made In Roath Collective was at the event with a poetry booth. Lit bombing? We loved it. We got to choose a subject and the poet in residence at the booth composed express masterpieces. Here are two, one called Freedom and one called The Sherman.

Everyone signed up to join Sherman 5, some PtW volunteers signed up to be Sherman 5 reps.To top off a fantastic morning, refugees in Cardiff, through Cardiff City of Sanctuary, served up a stunning array of traditional dishes from a number of African Nations. This is Jo’s plate with Eritrean, Ugandan, and Congolese food.

Diolch Pawb!

Pave the Way – wellbeing through volunteering

Contact Jo for more information:

Jo Harry

[email protected]

07387 577390

02921 322 627

If you want to find out more about Sherman 5:

www.shermantheatre.co.uk/sherman5

Pave the Way: Forest Farm with Green Days

We had sunshine and fun when we hitched onto a Green Days volunteering session at Forest Farm on Friday 30th June. We were pulling balsam and crushing bracken. Forest Farm is beautiful, a real hidden gem. If you haven’t been there, check out this link for more information: http://forestfarm.org.uk/

Rangers explaining what balsam and bracken are – just as well as Jo was clueless

David, Kevin, Jo and the Green Days team who let us join them

David looking cool and working hard

This beautiful wildflower meadow was a patch of scrub land not so long ago. Green Days project volunteers cleared the land earlier in the year and planted it up, it’s near the rangers’ hut for everyone to enjoy

If you want to find out more about volunteering with the Green Days you can via this link: https://www.innovate-trust.org.uk/green-days/department or if you are a Pave the Way volunteer, contact Jo ([email protected])

51st Annual General Meeting and Gathering

VCS Cymru – or Voluntary Community Services Cymru Limited to use our full name – held its 51st Annual General Meeting last night in the impressive setting of the newly opened Cornerstone Centre in Charles Street.

A new Management Committee was elected for the coming twelve months, with four new Trustees joining the organisation:- Alan Vaughan Hughes -who is Head of Cardiff University Special Collections & Archives; Joanna Parry – Senior Volunteering Manager at Marie Curie Cancer Care; Rhys Phillips – Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths (STEM) Ambassador and Donna Zammit – Local Businesswoman and longstanding member of the Radio Cardiff management team. They join the four Trustees who return for another term:- Mary Newman MBE (Chair); Andrew Vicker – Cardiff Council (Treasurer); Ken Barker (South Riverside Community Development Centre) and Nasir Adam (Taff Housing). Two new sub groups will be set up this year – Community History and Community Media – and further members with specialist knowledge in these areas will be co-opted to join over the next few weeks.

Following the formal business of the AGM the Management Committee ratified a proposal which will see VCS co-locate with Radio Cardiff at their premises in Butetown from 1st December.

This year’s presentation was from the Chronicle Team, and was given by Klavdija Erzan (Project Co-ordinator); Lara Taffer (Apprentice Archivist) and 2 members of the growing team of Chronicle Volunteers – Eleanor Hill and Mike Hawkins.

Our thanks go to all the Trustees, Volunteers and VCS Staff who made the evening an enjoyable and engaging event; to Vina Patel our Advisor from Social Firms Wales; Daniel Binks – our Mentor from Lloyds Bank, and Laurence Cohen – our Accountant from Gordon Downs & Company for their contributions; and to the team at Cornerstone for their excellent service.

Our Annual Report for the year 2015-16 is available here:

Annual Report 2015-16

VCS will be moving to 5-6 Hayes Building, Curran Road, Cardiff/CF10 5DF from December 1st, with ‘The Release Project’ and our new mental health supported volunteering project ‘Pave The Way’ operating from there, together with our Community Media projects. ‘The Chronicle Project’ has relocated to Glamorgan Archives for a temporary period of six months.

The move to Hayes Buildings will also be temporary as the building is in an area of redevelopment and VCS, together with Radio Cardiff (the community radio station) will be seeking new permanent premises together in 2017, which promises to be an exciting year.

As ever, we want to thank our funders: the Lloyds Bank Foundation; the Heritage Lottery Fund (Wales); the Big Lottery Fund (Wales) and Cardiff Council for their ongoing support.

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May 13, 2014February 27, 2017 by Jeremy Rees

Plans shaping up for VCS 50th Anniversary Week

We’ll be celebrating our 50th anniversary in June with a week long exhibition at The Cardiff Story (The Old Library) in The Hayes 2nd – 6th of June.

On Monday 2nd June we have a lunchtime launch event featuring the wonderful Tenovus ‘Sing With Us’ Choir’ and special musical guests with a 1960’s theme to remember our early days as Britain’s very first Volunteer Bureau.

We’ll also be welcoming Julie Morgan AM; Alun Micheal PCC; Peter Tyndall (Ombudsman) and VCS founder Robert Davies.

…..and we’ll be giving out ‘Golden Volunteer’ long service certificates to volunteers nominated by some of our 350+ registered organisations.

The exhibition continues on Tuesday with photographs & memorabilia on display. Our own team of VCS Senior Volunteers Champions – led by the wonderful Lesley – will be on hand to act as guides. On Tuesday our musical soundtrack will be from the 1970’s, on Wednesday its the 80’s, Thursday 90’s and we come up to date on the Friday with a special focus on Youth Volunteering.

On Wednesday 4th we’ll be launching our new project funded by the Lloyds Bank Foundation which will be supporting people with criminal convictions (& their families) into volunteering opportunities.

On Friday 6th June we end the week with our finale event – again taking place at lunchtime. This time the focus is on Young People and we’ll have live music from bands & performers from with some of our member organisations, including the Cathays Youth & Community Centre who are kindly helping us with the PA during the week.

Our confirmed guests on Friday include Jenny Willott MP; Stephen Doughty MP; Vaughan Gething AM; Jenny Rathbone AM and we’ll again be joined by VCS founder Robert Davies.

Luke Jones has been working tirelessly to organise this, and he is still very keen to hear from people who have been involved with VCS over the past half century who would like to get in touch to share their memories. Luke’s email is [email protected] or phone 029 2022 7625.

Our story is very much the story of the charities and organisations that use volunteers in Cardiff, and we are welcoming all these to join us to help tell their story too – so if you are with an organisation that has not yet got involved, and you have some memorabilia that you’d like us to include please get in touch with Luke over the next week.

We are also looking for nomination’s for long service volunteering certificates which will be presented on the Monday event, there is still a week to get in touch with your organisations nominee. This is not a competition, but an opportunity to recognise the dedication and commitment of long term volunteering.

VCS at The Cardiff Story will be open to the public from 10am – 4pm from Monday 2nd June to Friday 6th June. The Volunteer Centre will be running from the exhibition during the whole week and so our Brunel House drop-in will be closed for that period.

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March 18, 2014February 27, 2017 by Jeremy Rees

Young people discuss The Wales That They Want

Young people from Eco-Schools across Wales will meet in Cardiff for the first time this month to discuss an important issue- The Wales That They Want for the future.

Keep Wales Tidy is preparing to host the first ever Senior Eco-Committee conference at the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff Bay on 24^th March 2014.

In the first of its kind, Senior Eco Committee members from Eco-Schools around Wales will join Peter Davies, Wales’ Commissioner for Sustainable Futures, Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas, Chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee and Brid Conneely, International Director of the Eco-Schools Programme, at the National Assembly as part of the Welsh Government’s “National Conversation” on the Future Generation (Wales) Bill.

At the launch of the National Conversation on 18 February 2014, Jeff Cuthbert, Minister for Communities and Tackling Poverty said: “This Conversation is about the kind of Wales we want to see in the future. What sort of Wales do today’s 15 year olds want to live in when they are adults? The National Conversation will help us to set the agenda for Wales.”

Award winning Welsh actor and Keep Wales Tidy Ambassador, Michael Sheen, attended the launch of the National Conversation at the Wales Millennium Centre in support of the Bill that is due to become law next year.

Eco-Schools is an international programme delivered in Wales by Keep Wales Tidy. The programme allows young people to lead the way and combined with action based learning, creates an ideal way for schools to embark on a meaningful path to improving their school and local community. Pupils are elected to their Eco-Committees to represent their schools locally and nationally.

The Senior Eco-Committee conference’s launch will give pupils the chance to meet to discuss a range of topics that affect Wales, including issues that affect our environment, education, transport and economy. The conversation will take place in the Youth Chamber, where pupils will have the chance to put their views and questions to senior political figures of Wales.

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