Half a dozen companies have become founding partners in a UK government
initiative aimed at creating a million new community volunteers aged
between 16 and 25.
ITV, KPMG, MTV, Sky, Tesco and T-Mobile
will lead efforts to ‘revolutionize youth volunteering’. They will set
up volunteering opportunities themselves but will also work with the
government and voluntary groups to start schemes and provide funding
for existing ones.
This implements the main recommendation of
the Russell Commission, set up by the government in May 2004 to find
ways of developing a national framework that will ‘make volunteering
commonplace among young people’.
The companies will work
through a new charity, called v, which intends to find £50million
($92.5m) of private sector support over three years, with the
government supplying a further £50m of matched funding.
Barclays,
BT, Channel 4, Diageo, Emap, Flextech Television, HSBC, JPMorgan,
Norwich Union and RWE npower are among other companies that have agreed
to become involved.
