SiS Community Volunteering - Mentors Guidance
Step into Sport is a pathway to develop learning and leadership through volunteering. By developing your students through this pathway they are able to access and experience new opportunities.
Community Volunteering supports the final step of this pathway and provides leaders with these new experiences to build confidence, knowledge and skills.
What is Community Volunteering?
Community Volunteering can involve anything from coaching, sports admin, officiating to helping out at events. It’s about being involved with a local sports club, group or organisation where the leaders give their time and expertise whilst gaining new skills, confidence and recognition for themselves.
Community Volunteering differs from the school based volunteering that students may already be involved in through helping out with school sport and is about getting outside of the school walls and developing themselves in new environments.
Community Volunteering can take place at a sports club, group or local activity/event that that the leader already knows or at a placement that has been identified for them.
What is the referral form?
The referral form has been created for any leader who is interested in Community Volunteering and wants to find out about new opportunities. The form is to be completed by the leader to state their details and interests so Cornwall Sports Partnership can search for and provide them with suitable opportunities in their local sports community.
This form should only be completed by those who are committed to Community Volunteering.
Once the form is completed it should be signed by their school mentor and returned to Cornwall Sports Partnership. Cornwall Sports Partnership will then contact the leaders (copying in the mentor) with details of any community volunteering opportunities found and then support them into the placement.
Your role as a school mentor
Your role as a school mentor is vital not only to support them in their school based volunteering but also to provide a link to Cornwall Sports Partnership to develop community based volunteering. Mentors role should be to:
- Support leaders to register on the Step into Sport Online Passport Log
- Signpost and provide them with school based volunteer opportunities
- Verify any volunteering hours logged on the Online Passport and ensure leaders add community placements if undertaking community volunteering.
- Support leaders who wish to take part in community volunteering, either through their own placement or one that is identified by Cornwall Sports Partnership
- Support leaders who complete a referral form by working with Cornwall Sports Partnership to ensure the leader can access an identified opportunity.
Using the Step into Sport online passport
All volunteering, whether it be school or community based volunteering should be logged using the Step into Sport online passport.
As well as verifying any volunteering hours logged by leaders mentors also need to ensure that leaders add the details of any community placements via the ‘add placement’ tab on their home page.
This ensures that Cornwall Sports Partnership can support the club and ensure the club contact is fully aware of the Step into Sport programme.
If you have any queries on registering, logging on or using the Step into Sport Online Passport please contact:
Karen Edmond – Leadership Coordinator
Cornwall Sports Partnership
kedmond@cornwall.gov.uk
01872 323335
