Dear volunteer,
Celebrating volunteers, inspiring others
This week (1st to 7th June) is National Volunteers Week, “an annual celebration of the fantastic contribution that millions of volunteers make across the UK”. It is therefore fitting that, this week, we are launching the Ramblers 75th Anniversary Volunteers Awards. The Ramblers wouldn’t be the Ramblers without volunteers. Whether it is organising led walks, campaigning to protect public paths or extend access, recruiting members, or organising social events – the contribution made by Ramblers volunteers is immense.
There are eight categories in the Volunteer Awards, closing date in September. Please think about nominating those volunteers who have made a really special contribution to your Group, Area, or the Ramblers as a whole.
Recruiting new volunteers, and keeping existing ones, is a constant challenge, and many Groups tell me that they could do with more people to share the work between. Yesterday, I attended an event organised by the Network of National Volunteer-Involving Agencies (which includes charities like Age Concern, RSPB, NSPCC, as well as ourselves), and heard some inspiring stories about how groups recruited different types of volunteers – for example, people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental health problems, or refugees and asylum seekers. As with people who are retired, these groups of people may very well have more time for volunteering, and they will have many hidden skills.
I think that some Ramblers groups might benefit from recruiting different types of volunteers to help with the work.…something for us all to think about.
Keep in touch by email
This time last year, we stopped sending out the 'monthly mailing' by post to volunteers - and switched to communicating electronically instead. Not only has this saved quite a few trees, it has also saved the charity more than £100,000 in printing and postal costs. More importantly, it means that all volunteers have access to information on the website, whenever they want.
But I still hear from volunteers who say that they miss out on vital pieces of news. The easiest way to make sure that you know what is going on is to read the monthly volunteer e-newsletter which is emailed to more than 3,000 volunteers around the 8th of each month. It is a short bulletin, which you can read in about five minutes.
Do you receive it? If you don't, it's probably because we don't have your email address. Registering is easy - click here, fill in the details, and make sure you tick the third box down, 'News for Ramblers Volunteers'. We can then add you to the mailing list. If you hear other volunteers saying they aren't getting the information they need, please encourage them to register too (there's a link to it from the top of the Volunteer News page).
Special walks
Thanks to everyone who put on special Get Walking Day walks this year – 156 groups took part in total, putting on over 200 walks – that’s about half as many again as last year! We’ve so far received about 300 ‘£1 offer’ membership 
applications, but they’re still coming in so that isn’t the final total. We’ll need to monitor how many of them renew their membership at full rate, after the first year. On a similar theme, 180 75th anniversary ‘baton’ walks have so far been organised, a fantastic achievement (and they’ve received a lot of publicity, too). After 13 walks in Scotland during May, the walks have now moved to the east side of Britain – currently in the North East of England during June and then heading down to the South East. This picture shows the baton being passed from the Dalgety Bay group to the Dunfermline and West Fife group, at what we believe to be the highest 'handover' - 1038 metres, at the top of Munro number 59!
People's Collection Wales
Well done to Ramblers Cymru being part of the People’s Collection Wales project. This is a scheme to put on-line the contents of all the major museums in Wales – but it is much more besides. It allows anyone to upload photos or videos, or add their memories through recording or writing, to create a truly national on-line People’s Museum for Wales. What’s more, you can create online walking routes for others to follow – and Ramblers Cymru is involved, through its e-Trails project, in creating high-quality walking routes which people can follow. It isn’t easy to explain – so give the ‘test site’ a go by clicking the link above (Username: casgliad Password: stakeholder). I predict this is going to be a big success - and that the idea will spread to other countries (including England and Scotland!).
That's all from me for this month - thank you for all that you do, for the Ramblers.
