Local volunteer centre gets grant to set up provincial training program

The Volunteer Centre of Guelph Wellington is receiving $214,000 from the province to assist in training those that lead and organize volunteers.

Guelph MPP Liz Sandals made the announcement Tuesday morning at the centre's Cork Street office.

Christine Oldfield, Executive Director of the Volunteer Centre of Guelph Wellington, said the Guelph volunteer centre is the "administrative lead" on the project, which will developing and providing training throughout the province for volunteer organizations and managers.

"Volunteers really are the fabric of organizations and one of the challenges we have as organizations is figuring out how to involve those volunteers in our activities the best way possible," Oldfield said.

"Volunteer organizations are hungry for this type of training because there are limited options available," she said.

The money will be used to launch a new program called Canadian Code For Volunteer Involvement Training and Implementation Expansion. It's a training project that supports volunteer centres and managers of volunteers.

"It will be an excellent resource for organizations involving volunteers at all levels of an organization," Oldfield said.

The training will be done virtually and in person.

There will be subsidies available for 600 organizations to help pay for the training.

Sandals said the funding comes through the province's Partnership Grant Program that is supporting projects at 21 not-for-profit organizations across Ontario to the tune of $4.1 million.

The money is earmarked for increasing diversity within leadership teams, attracting and managing more volunteers and to improve ways of measuring volunteer success.

"Volunteers make the world go round. Government can never do everything it needs to do in the private sector," Sandals said.