George Thomson - Bursting some myths about volunteering 8 February 2018

Thu, Feb 8th 2018 at 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

George Thomson, CEO of Volunteer Scotland gave a talk to the Club.

Stuart Brown with George Thompson and President George

BURSTING SOME MYTHS ABOUT VOLUNTEERING

Introduced by President George Morrison, Chief Executive Officer of Volunteer Scotland, George Thomson gave an interesting talk about his career in the Voluntary Sector and outlined some of his views on how volunteering could be looked at from a different perspective.

George had studied Law in Aberdeen but has spent his entire career in the voluntary sector, the last 15 years being CEO of Volunteer Scotland, based in Forthside Stirling with a staff of 44.

His views about volunteering have further been influenced by a 10 week study leave break last summer. He spent time with others looking at how to increase public value through volunteering, how we can contribute to the ‘common good’. He found that people were very generous with their time when asked to help, however questioned the level of understanding of senior figures about what was really going on. 

He strongly believes that the ‘normal’ process whereby people are asked to support initiatives set by those who are in a leadership role was not the way forward and needs to be turned on its head.

Volunteering is based on historical support of communities and George cited examples of successful volunteering where local initiatives had delivered successful outcomes without having had a prescribed path to follow. He says ‘People in community can create the empowering environments for our public servants, charities and private companies to enable them to co create the outcomes sought by citizens.’ 

Stuart Brown, Speaker’s Host, thanked George for his thought provoking talk and for fielding many questions from the floor.

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