Celebration Stories: National Volunteer Week 2025

May 2025

Proud of your volunteers? We want to hear their story!

National Volunteer Week is 15–22 June 2025, and Volunteer South is calling for Celebration Stories!

Celebration Stories is a fantastic opportunity to highlight the theme of "Whiria Te Tangata – Weaving the People Together" and share the amazing impact of volunteers. It’s a wonderful way to publicly celebrate, honour, and acknowledge your volunteer team and the positive difference they make in your organisation and the community. By submitting your story, you’ll inspire others to get involved in volunteering and showcase the incredible value volunteers bring to our communities.

Stories will be published on our website and in the media, helping raise awareness of your organisation and the volunteering opportunities you offer, while inspiring the community to engage with you!

Already shared a story elsewhere? Resubmit it — we’ll refresh and share it with our wider network.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

• Click here to share why your volunteer or volunteer team is special, and how they make an impact on your organisation and the community. Submissions are due by Thursday, 5 June.

• Include at least one high-quality image of your volunteers.

• All submissions will be shared on our social media and website over the course of several weeks. These stories can also be shared through your own channels.

• Storytelling is a wonderful way to raise awareness of your organisation’s impact and show how volunteers can get involved. We’re happy to support you in the process!

Here are a few tips for a great volunteering story:

• Keep it short and zappy - about 250 words.
• Focus on only one or two things (we know this is hard!)
• Aim to create emotion: joy, heart, humour or surprise.
• Make it unique to the organisation.
• Leave no doubt that volunteering is an awesome, rewarding thing to do.

Submit your story by Thursday 5 June 2025.

Questions before you enter? Email your local community connector:

Sue O'Brien - sueobrien@volunteersouth.org.nz (Central Otago & Southland area)

Jasmin Enright - jasmin@volunteersouth.org.nz (Dunedin/Waitaki area)

Carol Morgan - carol@volunteersouth.org.nz (Queenstown Lakes area)