Micro-volunteering

by David Feather

A walking organisation in Scotland, called “Paths for All”, has introduced the term micro-volunteering. So, what is micro-volunteering?

You would expect that trying to maintain something like the Country Park requires a lot of manual effort. This is mostly done by the small group of enthusiastic volunteers in the “Friends of Southwick Country Park”. But we could certainly do with more help.

We know that there are many park users who would love to be more involved in volunteering, but they are unable to, due to other commitments. And this is where the concept of micro volunteering has a role to play. Micro volunteering tasks are little efforts that take very little time, but taken in total can have a significant effect. We know that many park users are already doing this, particularly picking up bits of litter and putting it in one of the bins in the Park. Moving branches that may have fallen on a path so that visually impaired visitors do not trip on them or pushchairs foul them is another such possibility.

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[1] Eight year-old micro-volunteer, Amelia, picking up trash in the park.
[2] One of the many problems that micro-volunteers can help us with.

A great way in which users can be very helpful is to report any problems immediately after seeing them. The sort of problems that might occur might be damage to fences and trees, picnic tables, gates etc. The sooner we know about a problem, the quicker it can be resolved.

You can contact the Friends via this website, or the Countryside Team at County Hall, on 01225 718647 or at countryside@wiltshire.gov.uk. For a real emergency though always ring 999.

Helping in little ways is a good way of showing pride in the Park, pride in our special environment.

…and please consider joining us for a little macro-volunteering…