Volunteering in 2024 and Beyond - Speakers

Rob Jackson is Director of Rob Jackson Consulting Ltd, a consultancy and training company that helps engage and inspire people to bring about change.

Rob has almost 30 years experience working in the voluntary and community sector, holding a variety of strategic development and senior management roles that have
focused on leading and engaging volunteers.

Rob has run his company since 2011 working with a wide range of clients in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the USA and Canada.

Rob is co-author of The Complete Volunteer Management Handbook (DSC, 2012 and 2019) and From The Top Down - UK Edition (Energize Inc., 2015).

Ruth Leonard is Chair of the UK’s Association of Volunteer Managers whose day job is Head of Volunteering Development and Operations at Macmillan Cancer Support.

For Ruth, involving volunteers is about building relationships to empower and enable people to bring creativity and ingenuity to a solution to make a difference in their community.

Her current role is to consider strategically where volunteering can add value to developing innovative solutions and to ensure a supportive infrastructure so people who want to give their time can have a quality experience.

Having been involved in volunteer management for 2 decades she has significant experience at providing leadership on involving and engaging people and is committed to ensuring others are able to develop these skills.

Co-author of a book on Volunteer Involvement - Volunteer Involvement: An Introduction to Theory and Practice, regular public speaker and partner on Vision for Volunteering, Ruth is a credible voice on volunteer management and passionate advocate for those who carry out this important role.

Chris has an extensive career in the charity sector that spans almost 25 years.

Having held director, CEO and trustee positions in national, federated and local charities he has a very broad experience at achieving maximum impact through people and communities to help charitable causes and membership bodies.

As well as over a decade on the boards of Volunteering England and NCVO, Chris chaired the National Network of Volunteer Involving Agencies.

Chris describes the mission of Time for Impact as;

1. Unmask the Impact: We reveal the hidden ROI of Volunteering for mission driven organisations.

2. Unlock the Potential: We help organisations turn goodwill into action, increasing participation and volunteering in causes.

3. Shape the Future of Volunteering: We lead the charge in innovation and thought leadership.

Alan is Head of Volunteering and Employee Engagement at the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds).

The RSPB is Nature’s Voice and at the RSPB, Alan is the voice of volunteering. He has spent all his working life, already longer than he cares to remember (over 30 years), working to enthuse, inspire and enable people to put their time and talents to best use for nature and the environment.

This passion came about from being a full-time volunteer with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers way back in 1989 – fabulous times as Alan describes them!

As Head of Volunteering and Employee Engagement for the RSPB he is the strategic lead for Volunteering and is the expert on all matters volunteering.

His role is all about making sure RSPB creates impactful volunteering opportunities that make the best use of people’s time, passion, skills, and knowledge. RSPB works to make sure people have such a wonderful time volunteering they would be happy to recommend volunteering with RSPB to a friend or family member.

The RSPB has over 14,000 regular volunteers giving a gift of time annually of over 1 million hours every year. RSPB’s volunteers undertake a wide variety of roles across all areas of the charities work.

Alan is still volunteering himself as a director of the Association of Volunteer Managers that supports, represents and champions those who work in volunteer management.

As John F Kennedy said:

“Every person can make a difference, and every person should try.”

After a varied career in volunteer engagement, leadership and strategy across the charity, heritage and public sectors, Sally now leads volunteering at Home-Start UK. Home-Start is a movement that supports families so that no parent feels alone. Sally leads volunteer development at a national level with a focus on supporting and enabling excellent volunteer practice and volunteer experiences across the entire Home-Start network. Sally enjoys all elements of volunteering leadership but has a particular passion for celebrating volunteers and volunteer wellbeing.

Jon is the Chief Executive of /together - a coalition of organisations from across the UK, ranging from The FA, to the Church of England through to Meta and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. All these organisations work together to build kinder, and more closely connected communities. Last year, /together helped create 'The Big Help Out', a festival of volunteering for the King's Coronation that say 7.2 million people participate. The event is returning for the 40th Anniversary of Volunteers Week on June 7th-9th 2024 and Jon will talk about how this event can kickstart change across the volunteering sector.

Catherine became Chief Executive of the Royal Voluntary Service, having joined the charity as a Trustee at the start of 2017. Catherine has a wealth of experience garnered over 25 years in the third sector, including acting as CEO of several other not for profit organisations. In 2016, Catherine was appointed CBE for her services to suicide prevention following her tenure as CEO of Samaritans.
Website: https://www.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/

Frowynke Siegers is the national volunteer development manager at the Refugee Council. Her other role at the same organisation is community development practice coordinator in the Resettlement programme. She is based in Hull.

Her work at this charity started in 2008 as community development and volunteer coordinator in the Resettlement programme in Hull & East Riding.

She then managed an employment and social integration project and several other projects supporting refugees and asylum seekers in hotels in Yorkshire.

As volunteer development manager she supports a group of volunteer coordinators. She is responsible for creating an excellent volunteering experience, offering support and guidance to anyone in the organisation to encourage a better understanding and effective practices. She plays a central role as the point of expertise and coordination for volunteering at the Refugee Council.

Jarina is Deputy Head of Volunteering at Imperial Health Charity, responsible for their Youth Volunteering Programme.

She was previously Strategic Volunteering Lead at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), providing consultancy, training and guidance to clients such as Community Leisure UK, Victoria and Albert Museum and others.

She has hands-on experience in volunteer recruitment, support and coordination in a pan-London lottery funded programme for refugees and migrants at the Evelyn Oldfield Unit.

She volunteered in Uganda, in community development and local capacity building and has served as a trustee of two charities, the Diaspora Volunteering Alliance and One World Action.

At NCVO she supported diverse organisations to share their stories in five Volunteers’ Week campaigns, 2015 to 2019. In 2021 Jarina launched the Vision for Volunteering, a national consultation to create a long-term plan for volunteering in England. She is a member of the Institute for Volunteering Research Advisory Panel.

Fatuma Ibrahim fled war-torn Somalia in 2002 as a young single mother of 2.

It took 5 years for her and her young family to get their official rights to remain giving her little access to support and services in this period.

Despite her personal situation with responsibility for raising two young children, and the challenges of integrating into a new culture and country, Fatuma was determined to rebuild her life.

In those 5 years she focused on improving her English, and then took her GCSEs and A-levels. Having experienced the horrors and hardship of fleeing her homeland and the challenges of rebuilding her life with her children in a new and unknown land, alone, Fatuma decided she must help others so that they do not face everything on their own and began volunteering to support refugees in 2007.

She started working with the Refugee Council in 2019. Since June 2022, as a volunteer with the Refugee Council Resettlement team, Fatuma has helped over 100 refugees with appointments, paperwork, as an interpreter between teachers and parents and being a friendly and understanding voice at all times. She received the Third Sector Volunteer of the Year Award 2023.

Emily Hughes has worked in the voluntary sector since 2005, with a particular focus on empowering volunteers to contribute to the sector.

She held strategic volunteer management roles at the National Autistic Society and Parkinson’s UK.

She is passionate about what organisations of all sizes contribute to the sector and spent 2010 volunteering in Zambia with VSO, supporting a community organisation to work effectively with volunteers.

She is also a trustee of AVERT, a small international HIV/AIDS charity based in Brighton. Since 2016 Emily has been Head of Volunteer Experience at Girlguiding, leading a department that takes a partnership approach to supporting 75,000 volunteers to deliver great experiences to girls across the UK. She has a Masters in Voluntary Sector Management from Cass Business School (now Bayes).

Catherine loves volunteering and making positive things happen. She is Volunteer Development Manager at OnSide, a youth charity which sets up and supports amazing spaces called Youth Zones, which empower and inspire young people across England.
Previously, Catherine set up the volunteering programme at Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation from scratch and she also worked in volunteering development at the Ramblers. Catherine has also volunteered herself in many roles, ranging from teaching English to refugees, to supporting patients at COVID vaccination centres.