Volunteers' Week 2020

Welcome to our virtual party where we will be sharing lots of fun things to celebrate our wonderful volunteers of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Over the course of the week we'll be adding content daily to share the stories and successes of volunteering across the Trust. Keep scrolling down to see each day as it's added. We hope you find the content we share entertaining and uplifting- thank you all for the part you play in protecting Yorkshire's wildlife and wild places.

It’s the last day of Volunteers’ Week- and wow what an action packed week of films, stories, a creative competition and a quiz you’ve had to get stuck into. We wish we could have been with you celebrate face to face but hopefully what we have provided virtually has been entertaining. We wanted you to show how valued and appreciated you all are and how at the heart of all these celebrations has been you, our volunteers. Each of our 800 volunteers should be proud of the huge impact you have for nature conservation and basically making the world a better place- THANK YOU!!

We could think of no better way of ending Volunteers’ Week than by messages of gratitude from our CEO Rachael Bice and the Volunteering Support Team- Marie, Becky, Lindsay and Ana.

It’s the penultimate day of Volunteers' Week and last but by no means least we move to South Yorkshire, our remaining team to find out about volunteering here. We have a whole bunch of brilliant volunteers in South Yorkshire from a small army of people who help Potteric Carr ticking over, to livestock checkers, survey volunteers and practical conservation volunteers who help maintain reserves in this area. We hope you enjoy Sophie and Kate's volunteering stories today.

There’s also an audio recording of a social distanced Wildlife Question Time for you to have a listen to- we had many interesting questions to answer, so thank you for sending them in to us.

 Every day we've hopefully shown you something that demonstrates how valued our volunteers are at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. We hope you are enjoying this virtual Volunteers' Week as much as we are!

It's Day Five and we're still going with our virtual celebrations! Today we hear from Vanessa Barlow in the East Region Team and learn how volunteers are helping to transform Barmby on the Marsh nature reserve and then we head over to find out from John Cave what our Invasive Non Native Species project gets up to with the help of volunteers. Plus we hear from one of Voluntary Trainees- George Hoey about why he's taking time out to do his placement with us.

We’re also bursting at the seams to tell you who the winners are of our Creative Competition- scroll down to find out!

Once again we have been amazed by your talent, skill and creativity, what an incredible group of people our volunteers are.  There were four categories, Paintings/Art, Poetry, Photography and Other Creatives. Below are the 1st place and runners up for each of these rounds.
Paintings/ Art
1^st Place Bluebells in Sandall Beat Wood by Rosemary Millican
Runner Up Entertaining the Wildlife on Loversall Delph at Potteric Carr by Sheila Bury
 
Poetry
1st Place Walking up Watlowes by Helen Pedley
Runner Up Wolds Walk in May by Sue Austin
 
Photography
1^st Place Beef Shorthorn on the Herbal Lay Field by Faye Barson
Runner up Come Rain or Shine by Alison Scott
 
Other creatives
1st Place Harp Playing at Danes Dyke by Julie Thompson
Runner Up Good Morning music composed by Rachel Gibson

Once again thank you to everyone who entered the competition you should all be incredibly proud of your talents!

We’re half way through the celebrations of our volunteers and there’s still so much to see and hear about- that’s testament to the amount of support and generosity of time we receive from all of you.

Day four takes us to the sea- a special place for many of us, full of wonderful wildlife and big skies. We have an incredible team of volunteers that support our Living Seas work-our Welcome Volunteers and Inspiring People Volunteers at the Living Seas Centre who welcome and inspire our visitors about the marine conservation, to our Peering at Puffin Volunteers who share the spectacle of the sea bird city at Flamborough with passers-by and also there’s a massive team of Seawatch Surveyors up and down the east coast watching out for cetaceans.

In our stories today, we’ll be hearing from Emma Dawber who volunteers at the Living Seas Centre in many guises and Bex Lynam North Sea Marine Advocacy Officer talks about why volunteers are such a vital element of the Seawatch Project. We also have a film about one of our Waves of Waste Co-ordinators- Luzanne Fletcher
 

The virtual party is in full swing now and on Wednesday we go west to hear about volunteering in this area with three great stories from staff and volunteers in our West Region Team. Plus for all you quiz lovers out there, we have the Great Big Volunteers Quiz for you to download and play with friends and family- there's a Yorkhire round, oh and yes of course a wildlife round but we hope the the final round will make you chuckle.

We hope you enjoyed yesterday’s video stories. Today we shift our focus to volunteering across North Yorkshire- there’s so much that goes on in this part of the county. We have some amazing Supporter Groups of practical conservation volunteers who help to maintain nature reserves at Grass Wood and in the Harrogate area, there's also survey volunteers, voluntary trainees, livestock checkers and behind the scenes volunteers at our head office.  

Today we hear from Living Landscapes Officer Graham Standring, Rachel Green Supporter Group Co-ordinator and Practical Conservation Task Leader and Dominic Hinchley from the Yorkshire Peat Partnership.

It's day one of Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts Volunteers' Week 2020 celebrations! To kick off the week we have a film from Rachael Bice our Chief Executive sharing her thoughts with you about volunteering at the Trust.

We recently won the planning inquiry that has secured Askham Bog Nature reserve from a large housing development- Louise Wilkinson Campaigns Manager and Alastair Fitter Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Trustee, share with us how important this site is for nature and how volunteers play their part in looking after this special place.

Former Trustee Hilda Muir shares her thoughts with us about how volunteers have played their part in the past and how their legacy as a volunteer has helped build the Trust into what we see today.

We hope you enjoy today’s entertainment. Tomorrow we will visit our staff and volunteers in our North region team to hear about some of their stories.