15 April 2020
Five lessons from the past about spontaneous volunteering in emergencies
The spread of coronavirus in the UK has seen a rapid rise in grassroots activities outside of official emergency responses – known as ‘spontaneous volunteering’. These are aimed at helping the most vulnerable and range from organised neighbourhood efforts such as Covid-19 Mutual Aid groups or smaller, informal actions like looking after a neighbour. We’ve seen them in different countries and settings such as the Christchurch earthquakes, the Grenfell Tower fire and in pandemic emergencies such as Ebola.
This blog post from NCVO explores five key lessons from research on past examples of spontaneous volunteering efforts.