Hello all,
As part of Student Volunteering Week 2017, Volunteer Centre Manchester is welcoming Guest Blogs from people who undertake volunteering and those who manage and support said activity. Today we have a great blog from Christian Sinclair.
On Valentine’s Day members of the Macc team, took part in a pilot radio training course at ALL FM, in Levenshulme. It was a thoroughly enjoyable team building day, and was led by the wonderful Jason and Annie from ALL FM. 
A couple of weeks ago, I came across an interesting blog post entitled Stuart Etherington’s New Year Letter to the Sector which gave his thoughts, as NCVO Chief Executive, on the potential challenges for the voluntary sector in 2017 and beyond.
In 2011 Manchester took the decision to address the fragmented VCSE infrastructure in the city by combining it into a single body. Effectively this arrangement has only been in place since 2012 and has already been re-tendered once (where Macc was the successful bidder).
Community groups, workplaces and households across the North West are being given the chance to win a ‘Canteen Kit Out’ this winter, after research* has revealed that just 38 per cent of locals take a regular lunchbreak. 
Hello all,
Here's to a great week!
Just quickly, last week we shared with you some information on how you can get involved with Volunteering in and around Manchester.
To follow that up, this week we’d like to share with you our 10 top tips (In no particular order) to help make your volunteering journey an enjoyable experience.
The University of Salford has partnered with Santander to offer internship opportunities to University of Salford students and graduates. The internships duration will be between 1 and 10 weeks with the intern working on a full-time or part-time basis. Full time positions are based on a 35 hour week. 
Funding
Each intern under the programme shall be paid a minimum of £300 per week based on a 35 hour week.
In January a lot of people take the time to reflect and think about what the year ahead may look like for them, both professionally and/or personally and a lot of the time volunteering can find its way on to the list of ‘things to do’ this year.
Unfortunately though, it doesn’t always get crossed off the list and that isn’t because people can’t be bothered or have gone off the idea, a lot of the time it’s they don’t know how to get started.
Our latest data sets on our work with voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations and volunteers is now available on our website here: www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/policy-and-influence/open-data
We recently awarded grants to applicants to our Mental Health Grants Programme and will be realising the data on our Open data page soon.
The Mental Health Grants Programme is provided by NHS North, Central and South Manchester CCGs and administered by Macc.
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover and were diversity is concerned, nothing could be truer. We often talk about Manchester’s diverse communities as collective groups, but when you look inside there are thousands of individuals each with their own strengths, their own values and their own identities. Just like reading a book, the more you look into it, the more interesting it becomes. 