Your Name: Jennifer Hunt 
Your Telephone No: 01380 718009 
Your Email Address: oralhistory@royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk 

In January 2014, the Royal Voluntary Service Archive & Heritage Collection received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting two year project, Voices of Volunteering: 75 Years of Citizenship and Service. The main aim is to collect up to 80 oral histories, which capture the memories and recollections of people who have volunteered and worked for the Royal Voluntary Service. These will take place between May 2014 and December 2015. The project also aims to make this material accessible through the Royal Voluntary Services online catalogue and new educational resources for secondary schools. 

In addition to these 80 oral histories the project aims to give volunteers across Britain, called Heritage Champions, the skills and knowledge to gather voices of volunteering in their local areas. These Heritage Champions will be able to benefit from a practical workshop given by the Project Archivist on the various aspects of the project such as interviewing, research and archiving skills. They will then be able to go out and visit current and former volunteers and record their interesting and invaluable stories for the Archive. 

Twelve months later over 30 volunteers’ unique stories have been collected. More stories are still to be gathered by our team of Heritage Champions, led by the Project Archivist. The Archive is still on a nationwide search for volunteers in England, Wales and Scotland to help with collecting and archiving oral histories, from WVS/WRVS volunteers, in their local areas. 

Heritage Champions will be able to benefit from a practical workshop given by the Project Archivist on the various aspects of the project such as interviewing, research and archiving skills. They will then be able to go out and visit current and former volunteers and record their interesting and invaluable stories for the Archive. Those who are interested in taking part in the project can find out more information atwww.royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/about-us/our-history/voices-of-volunteering. There is an information sheet I can send to you which will provide more details. 

I thought this would be a really good opportunity for people who are looking for training and experience or something a bit different in the field of oral history, As the Evanton Oral History Project I thought you might be interested as for part of the project I will be interviewing our Scottish Volunteers in Inverness but we would like to be able to see more and having volunteers who know the local area would be a great help to us. 

If you could circulate to your members I would be most grateful as I am planning to visit inverness at the end of July/beginning of August. 

I look forward to hearing from you