Independent Age — Looking back, looking forward
From campaigns to fundraising, from volunteering to information and advice, we’ve had a lot of brilliant things to be proud of this year. Many of these highlights are down to you, so thank you from all of us! Take a look at our highlights and what we’re looking forward to in 2022.
Fundraising
A highlight this year has been having our corporate partners involved in our volunteering offer. Our corporate partners play a crucial role in our work, not just by raising funds but also by helping to deliver our services through volunteering.
Karen, who works for our partner Pension Insurance Corporation and who became a telephone befriender during the pandemic, said: “When we went into lockdown…I couldn’t help but think how isolated and lonely older people in society must be feeling. When I saw Independent Age’s call-out for befriender volunteers, I immediately knew it would be a rewarding experience.”
If you work somewhere that has a scheme for working with charities, whether through fundraising or volunteering, we would love to hear from you. Email us at corporateteam@independentage.org.
Meanwhile, our Events team is really looking forward to next year. We have many great events for all skill types, so why not walk, jog or run to help support Independent Age in 2022? Together, we can make a huge difference. We have places available in the:
London Landmarks Half Marathon Sunday 3 April
Brighton Marathon Sunday 10 April
Hackney Half Marathon Sunday 22 May
London 2 Brighton Challenge 28–29 May
Peak District Challenge 9–10 July
Great North Run Sunday 11 September
Royal Parks Half Marathon Sunday 9 October
We would love you to join #TeamIA! If you’re interested and would like to secure your place, please join an event here. For more information about any of our fundraising events, call the Events team at 020 7605 4223 or email events@independentage.org.
Information and advice
A big thank you to the members of our Readers’ Panel for their time and feedback over this past year. We’ve sent out at least one survey a month, on a variety of topics, and the Panel’s answers and comments always help us improve our information.
One highlight this year, is our new Technology hub. This started as a single webpage about helping someone else to get online. After our first Panel review, we realised there was an appetite to learn more. Since then, Panel members have helped with:
· working out which pages we need
· how we organise the hub to make it easier to get around
· what we could do to make it clearer — the ‘Jargon buster’ boxes on some pages were a brilliant suggestion from our Panel members.
We couldn’t have developed the new hub without all this helpful feedback. We hope the hub helps older people develop their digital skills, so they can feel more confident going online.
We’ve got lots in the works for next year, too. We’re starting with some new mini-guides about benefits in April and looking forward to sharing them with our Readers’ Panel soon.
You can join our Readers’ Panel online or by calling our Information team on 020 7050 6560.
Campaigning
A big highlight of 2021 for the Campaigns team was launching the LEAP (Lived Experience Advisory Panel) volunteer role. Here, volunteers over the age of 65 help us shape our policy and influencing work through a variety of activities: testing our research methods, reviewing our existing emails, sharing views on our campaign actions or discussing numerous topic areas that are important to people in later life. For instance, we recently held a session that discussed language around bereavement and death. Our volunteers, who had experience of bereavement, talked about the specific terms they preferred and those they disliked.
We’re holding our first Campaigns messaging session this month, in which our LEAP volunteers will share their views on our messaging and actions. Through this, we hope we can gain insight into what is appreciated about our work, as well as the things we can improve on.
We’re also looking forward to the activities and actions we’re planning for our LEAP volunteers in 2022.
Volunteering
A highlight for us this year was hosting our Virtual Volunteers’ Week. It was a brilliant opportunity for us to shout about all the great things you as volunteers do! We had messages from staff, a special edition of our Volunteer Newsletter and, of course, our virtual meet-up at the end of the week. The event was a wonderful chance for staff and volunteers to come together and share the stories and experiences of our volunteers across different areas of the charity. Thank you to all who came along and got involved — it was great to connect with you.
We’re looking forward to a busy year in 2022. We hope to support colleagues across the charity to help develop more diverse volunteer roles within different areas of our work.
