Women's Design Service (WDS) organised a Launch Event for the Women's Neighbourhood Volunteering Project (WNVP) on Wednesday 26th February 2003 to promote women's volunteering in London deprived neighbourhoods. The aim of WNVP is to improve and promote volunteering opportunities in partnership with women living in the three London boroughs the project will work in: Tower Hamlets, Newham and Haringey. This is a partnership project between WDS and the Women's Resource Centre (WRC) with WDS taking the lead role in the project.

The key objectives of the project are:

1. To increase women's volunteering in London's deprived neighbourhoods through creative and innovative approaches in partnership with women and organisations;
2. To enable women to volunteer, especially those who would not normally volunteer such as refugees, disabled women and older women from diverse communities;
3. To enable organisations in voluntary and statutory sectors to support and develop women's volunteering.

The launch event provided an opportunity for women and workers working with volunteers to meet and share experiences of working with volunteers and women's involvement in local regeneration. The networking event proved to be a success with a lot of mini-discussions and information exchange. A presentation slide show on volunteering and regeneration in the three boroughs kept playing in the background. Food seemed to be the main attraction and this was the icebreaker for people getting to know each other. The volunteer workers brought their own publicity leaflets and people exchanged project and contact details. The event was attended by a diverse group of people from organisations and groups such as WRC, Race on the Agenda, Urban Forum, AGLOW, VATH, Islington Volunteer Centre, Red Triangle Volunteer Bureau and SAfH Self Help Network and many more.

WNVP is setting up borough sub-groups (one in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Haringey) where local women volunteers, groups and organisations can play a part in promoting and improving women's volunteering in their borough. If you or your organisation is interested in being part of the borough sub-group and would like to be involved in the project please contact Shahanara Begum on 020 7490 5210 or email: [email protected]. You can also join the WNVP Network, a forum for discussing women's volunteering in local regeneration, sharing information, ideas and good practice in volunteering by getting in touch with Shahanara.

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