Calling all volunteers
On our iPM New Years Honour programme we found our listeners are doing voluntary work ranging from setting up a basking shark watch project to distributing human milk to newborn babies.
And following our look at the stigma around unemployment, listener Janiece Spence told us volunteering was a worthwhile way to spend time between jobs: you learn new skills, gain potential employment references and it looks good on your CV.
Other people may be thinking that too. We've spoken with the charity , who say that figures from December show there's been a 44% increase year-on-year in the number of applicants for voluntary work.
Have you done unpaid work during periods of unemployment? What did you do and how did you find it? Or do you run an organisation in need of volunteers? Leave us a comment or email ipm-at-bbc.co.uk
UPDATE Part of the government's plans to help the unemployed, include new volunteering opportunities. There's also the prospect that, for the long term unemployed, they could be required to . Ralph Michell of the spoke to Eddie about this. You can hear and extended version of that interview in the player below.
(BTW ACEVO's CEO )
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