eVOLve Leads the Way for Youth Volunteering

evolve is JLGB’s response to the ever-changing needs of young Jewish volunteers. For the first time, evolve brings together all key stakeholders from across the community to ensure that social action becomes more accessible and more rewarding for Jewish young people than ever before. evolve creates a coherent, age progressive and streamlined framework for volunteering and accredited training that embraces all Jewish young people to enable and equip them to fully engage in meaningful training, volunteering and citizenship throughout their school years and onto student life.

Following the astronomical success of last year’s volunteering awards, with record numbers of young people across the country volunteering through evolve, JLGB’s youth volunteering and skills initiative, JLGB is now excited to launch the awards for the academic year of 2018-2019.

evolve is unique because it aligns volunteering and social action projects to national awards such as The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, vinspired Award and National Citizen Service (NCS). evolve achieves this by bringing together the major stakeholders: young people, parents, charities & organisations, teachers, and youth groups & synagogues so that all volunteers, students and opportunities can be managed in one place for everyone involved to enable young people to be matched to age appropriate opportunities and log their hours towards nationally recognised awards.

In the next few weeks JLGB’s dedicated evolve team will be going in to Jewish secondary schools to launch faith sensitive versions of nationally recognised volunteering awards. Completing these awards through evolve means that young people can find youth friendly volunteering opportunities in their local area that match their individual skills and interests as well, log and track their volunteering hours to gain their certificate of recognition. Through evolve young people can complete the Yoni Jesner Award (ages 11-13) and the vinspired Award (ages 16+) as well as being able to find placements for the volunteering sections of their Duke of Edinburgh's Award (from school year 9).

In addition to regular in-school sessions, we are excited to be planning two special events this year. In the coming months we will run a seminar which will bring together charities, schools, synagogues and youth groups from across the community; the focus will be best practise for youth friendly and faith sensitive volunteering opportunities for young people and to learn more about what evolve can offers and how the different stakeholders can support young people to complete different awards. In addition, plans are afoot for a huge youth social action celebration to showcase the amazing achievements of young Jewish volunteers in 2019.

By creating an account on evolve, young people will be presented with hundreds of opportunities in their local area, tailored to their interests. To see what opportunities are available visit www.jlgb.org/evolve

Read on for more information about the individual awards offered through evolve and to sign up today.

The Yoni Jesner Award

In partnership with the Yoni Jesner Foundation, this community award calls 11-13 year olds to volunteer just 20 or 50 hours of their time in memory of the inspirational Yoni Jesner, who was an active youth leader in the Glasgow community. This award will be formally launched at schools with an address from Yoni’s mother, Marsha Gladstone, on who Yoni was and what he achieved in his life. After completing the award, participants will be invited to a graduation ceremony in the presence of the Chief Rabbi and members of Yoni’s family to receive a certificate to mark their achievement. Read about this year’s ceremony HERE.

Applications for the Yoni Jesner Award are ALREADY OPEN! Sign up at www.jlgb.org/yonijesner

vInspired Award

The vinspired Award is a nationally recognised award and a fantastic addition to a UCAS application or CV. There are three levels to this award corresponding to the number of hours volunteered: v10, v50 and v100. Volunteering for the vInspired Award not only shows universities and future employers a commitment to the service of others and an appreciation for social action, it also gives vital experience and develops transferrable skills to help young people succeed in their next stage of life. There is a huge variety of opportunities on evolve, for example, aspiring doctors can gain hands on hospital experience volunteering at the Royal Free and budding historians can become expert researchers with opportunities from our partner organisation, We Were There Too.

Look out for JLGB’s volunteering fairs for year 12’s in schools soon. These fairs provide an opportunity for students to meet with charities and find out more about their opportunities on evolve. We encourage all students to speak to the different charities about what they offer, find out what you can gain from a placement and sign up to support a cause that you are passionate about.

Applications for the vinspired Award are ALREADY OPEN! Sign up at www.jlgb.org/evolve

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) is the world’s leading achievement award for young people set up by the Duke of Edinburgh 60 years ago. JLGB is proud to be the only national provider of a kosher DofE provision and has been ever since the award’s inception. To achieve the award, young people must complete a number of sections including a volunteering placement. Young people can use evolve to easily find a volunteering placement in their area that will excite them.

Read more about DofE and to register your interest at www.jlgb.org/dofe

Open College Network Accreditation

In addition to these volunteering awards, young people can also gain accreditation in a wealth of subject through evolve by completing Open College Network (OCN) accredited modules. OCN is a national qualification-awarding organisation regulated by Ofqual and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). With over 25 years' experience of accrediting courses for a wide range of centres, they are a market leader in the recognition of learner achievement through credit-based units and qualifications. Some examples of these modules offered by JLGB are: Communication Skills, Risk Management, Safeguarding Children, Organisation Skills, Peer Mentoring, Developing Leadership Skills and Teamwork Skills.

Through evolve, JLGB has created a top-of-the-range online accreditation system which means that all evidence is submitted, checked, assessed and externally verified by OCN online. With access to a bank of over 2,500 ‘off-the-shelf’ modules, from Entry Level to Level 2, completed accredited modules through evolve enriches young people’s university applications and CVs.

JLGB has an excellent track record in creating bespoke accredited courses for organisations, including: FZY, Habonim Dror, Streetwise Maccabi and Yeshiva Darchai Torah. Last month, JLGB accredited over 50 young people through Redbridge Jewish Community Centre’s MIKE leadership programme.


To find out more about evolve and how to start your volunteering award today please visit www.jlgb.org/evolve or email volunteering@jlgb.org