Community Blog
Thursday 3rd December 2009
Welcome to the eVOLution team blogging page!
As we continue to evolve and grow, I would like to welcome you all to the new eVOLution blog page: an opportunity for our team to contribute thoughts, perspectives and ideas and hopefully also share an insight into the working environment of a third sector infrastructure. Information technology has become at the forefront of our working practices and the increased use of social networking and other new means of informing and communicating with clients and service users can only strengthen and sustain not only eVOLution but the wider community.
eVOLution has seen a number of significant changes in the past few years and as we continue to develop and progress forwards, we hope you will join us in doing so.
Happy reading!
Karen Grundy. Executive Director
Monday 7th December 2009
To Tweet or not to Tweet
I was never quite sure how social networking could work to promote a Third Sector organisation, but after attending a workshop some months ago, I was inspired to find ways in which we could link in with this new generation of poking, blogging and tweeting. A new social networking site has launched today, with the support of Red Foundation. Check out www.i-volunteer.org.uk for more information. It’s a great way of keeping in touch with other volunteering communities or finding out about new opportunities. Social networking in businesses and organisations can be a fantastic way of meeting a new audience of people and both volunteers and organisations can log their details. In whatever format, strong communications and new ways of keeping in touch- can only be a good thing. Becky Stubbing, Youth Volunteer Worker
Monday 11th January 2010
It's just a question of time...
Here’s a thought. Imagine if you were given £86,400 each morning and you MUST spend it in 24 hours. You can’t invest it and you can’t save it for a rainy day. So how do you spend it? This happens to each of us, every single day- with a much more valuable resource- our time.
Each day, we have 86,400 seconds which we must use. We can’t save or invest them and this really raises the importance of managing your time- from to-do lists to diaries, calendars and personal organisers. By prioritising what is most important to us, time management allows us to spend quality time doing the more important things that add value to our lives.
I always seem to be short of time. So in an attempt to address this, I finally succumbed, put aside my blinding skepticism and purchased a book called ‘The Time Trap’ by Alex Mackenzie. I tend to think that most self help books of this type are just 200 monotonous pages stating the obvious. However, the new open minded me thought this one was somewhat of an interesting read. Better time management comes from changing your behavior more than anything else. We all know the culprit time wasters- lingering at the kettle, repeated checking of emails, the dreaded Facebook…..
Mackenzie suggests writing down how you spend your working day- in every detail. It’s a real eye opening exercise. He also recommends focusing on the big tasks and fitting the little ones in around this, oh and not changing activities too much as contrary to popular belief, you lose more focus and apply yourself less to each task. Changing habits is difficult but with a bit of luck and practice, that report should be done in no time.
Becky Stubbing, Youth Volunteer Worker