2023 marks the 39th year of Volunteers’ Week which is held on 1-7 June every year.  With this year’s theme of ‘Celebrate and Inspire’ we are celebrating the work of our brilliant 1,500 volunteers who, in the past year alone, gave a total of 15,381 hours (2,197 days) to the Trust. We are also hoping to inspire anyone thinking about volunteering with us to get in touch, to be the change that we want to see and get involved in whatever way works for them. 

The contribution of volunteers is often unseen and unrecognised by many but not by us! With a small paid workforce of only 114 and with responsibility for managing over 60 nature reserves and several education centres our work and achievement of our mission – to get more people on nature’s side and create more space for wildlife to thrive - simply would not be possible without our dedicated and brilliant team of volunteers!  

So, from all of us at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, a huge thank you to our incredible volunteers who help us in anything from planting seagrass pods, to promoting and enhancing visitors’ enjoyment and understanding of wildlife across a range of our nature reserves and Education Centres, to assisting with the delivery of our Forest Schools programmes, running community groups, livestock lookering, warderning on our nature reserves, litter picking, surveying, and much, much more!