As an organisation, we believe that we are accountable to our communities and as a result, we want to highlight how W3RT CVS is working to support the communities. Therefore, after every quarter, we will be sharing details of the work we have been involved in during the last three months, so you can see what we do, who we support and how we are helping our communities.

In the last three months, W3RT CVS has:

• Supported over 75 different voluntary organisations across Watford and Three Rivers with over 110 different requests for support
• More than 60% of those organisations were supporting communities who fall within one of the nine protected characteristics.
• Provided over £17,000 of funding to 11 organisations to respond to the cost of living crisis and to reduce their environmental impact

Responding the Cost of Living Crisis

It is no surprise that during the last quarter, the majority of our work was around support our communities to respond to the cost of living crisis. Despite the range of support made available by the Government, we know that voluntary organisations remain critical to the local response to this crisis and our work has been to ensure that they have everything they need to ensure they can respond as effectively as possible. For example:

• We regularly attend meetings hosted by our local authority partners in Watford and Three Rivers. These meetings allow us to understand the impact that the cost of living crisis is having on our communities and to ensure that key local groups are aware of the support that W3RT CVS can offer as well as other organisations.

• As organisations begin to open Warm/Welcoming Spaces in response to the pandemic, we have managed funding to allow them to run these Spaces without seeing an increase in their costs. In Watford, we provided funding to the value of £12,167 to six organisations who were opening as welcoming/warm spaces. We will continue to manage funding in Watford for Welcoming/Warm spaces as well as managing a new fund for organisations in Three Rivers wishing to do the same.

Volunteering

We know that volunteers were crucial to the local response during the Coronavirus pandemic and the cost of living crisis will require the same response from the local voluntary sector and their volunteers. However, the pool of volunteers has been significantly depleted by both the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. As a result, and to ensure that our community can respond to the challenges it faces, we are working to ensure that organisations can find new volunteers who they might not have worked with before. For example:

• In partnership with the Watford and West Herts Chamber of Commerce, we hosted the first Corporate Volunteering Event in October 2022. This event was attended by around 30 voluntary organisations and 10 local businesses and formed the start of the discussions around corporate volunteering. Statistics show that 33% of public sector organisations have a Corporate Volunteering Scheme and that 23% of all private sector organisations have a scheme too. As a result, we are beginning to encourage voluntary organisations to consider how they can incorporate corporate volunteering opportunities within their volunteering offer for both one off opportunities and more long term volunteering needs.

• We have also been in conversations with colleges and schools to promote volunteering to their students. As well as helping people engage with their community and to meet new people, volunteering is a great way to improve your career prospects. In one surveyof volunteers, 10% said that they received new job offers after volunteering, and 8% went so far as to change careers. We plan to continue these conversations to increase the number of young people volunteering in our communities so that our communities can continue to respond to the challenges it faces.

New challenges require new organisations

As well as helping those organisations already supporting our communities, W3RT CVS has supported a wide range of individuals who want to support their communities with new projects and initiatives. For example, below are just some of the projects that we have helped support over the last three months:

• A boxing projects designed to help support men’s health and wellbeing
• A dance group designed to improve the health of local residents
• Cultural and representative groups to help support and represent our diverse communities.

Many of these organisations are now in a position to support our communities thanks to our support, allowing them to apply for funding to cover the costs of their projects.

We hope that this report shows the impact that W3RT CVS is having within and for our communities and we will continue to do so in 2023. If you would like to discuss how W3RT CVS can support you and your organisation, do not hesitate to contact us via email or call 07908 209908.