GPG Join eVOLve Initiative as Major Funding Partner
Thanks to recently announced funding from Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), JLGB are set to strengthen its ‘eVOLve youth volunteering and skills initiative’, complementing its pioneering online platform with additional digital functionality and local community training and support for charities, schools and synagogues to better engage young Jewish volunteers. This funding will also provide a huge boost to JLGB’s #iwill campaign pledge and commitment to engage 15,000 young people in social action.
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.
evolve is unique because it aligns volunteering and social action projects to national awards such as The Duke of Edinburgh’s 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.
Thanks to the support of GPG, 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), National Citizen Service (ages 15-17) as well as being able to find placements for the volunteering sections of their Duke of Edinburgh's Award (from school year 9).
Ilia Salita, the president and chief executive of GPG, said:
“Our vision at GPG is to contribute to the continued growth of Jewish life in the UK by focusing on hard-to-reach and under-engaged populations. With that in mind, we are supporting four organizations of crucial importance to the UK Jewish community as they strive to widen their reach and deepen their impact. We are certain that this series of grants will add to the robust fabric of Jewish life in the UK by helping our partners to have a sustainable impact for years to come.”
In addition to regular in-school sessions, we are excited to be planning two special events this year, in conjunction with GPG. On 23rd January 2019, we will run a seminar which will bring together charities, schools, synagogues and youth groups from across the community; the focus will be on best practise for youth friendly and faith sensitive volunteering opportunities for young people, to learn more about what evolve can offer 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 autumn 2019.
To see what opportunities are available in your local area through eVOLve and gain awards for your volunteering visit www.jlgb.org/evolve
