NEW Zealand is beckoning to Emily Wood from Tavistock, who has won a scholarship to travel to the country to study different approaches to volunteering. Emily found out about the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust through her work at BBC Radio Devon. Grants are awarded every year to travel abroad under different categories, and for 2008 one of the categories was 'The Recruitment and Use of Volunteers in the Community'. 'This was exactly what I had been doing at Radio Devon,' Emily said. After getting through the first two application stages and the interview in London with members of the Trust, including Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Emily received a letter saying she had been awarded the funding. 'My plan is to go to New Zealand for a month, probably in October this year, and spend two weeks in the North Island and two in the South Island. 'I already have contacts at some of the volunteer centres, so I will spend time with them to see how differently they recruit and place volunteers compared to this country. I will also volunteer myself, to get a picture of the New Zealand volunteering experience and meet other volunteers to find out their reasons and motivations behind volunteering their time to help their local community,' Emily said. Information from her report to the trust on her findings will be passed to volunteer centres in Devon who might be looking for different ways to get people volunteering. Emily also plans to record interviews with the people she meets.
