Making A Move With Microsoft
Volunteering Kirklees were approached by Jon, a local employee of Microsoft who offer all their staff three days per year to volunteer as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. Jon was keen to share his time and skills with a local charity but didn’t know where to start. Volunteering Kirklees provided Jon with a selection of opportunities with not for profit organisations that would benefit from some IT expertise.
Jon chose to spend the day with Kirklees Visual Impairment Network (KVIN), a user-led charity run by and for people with Visual Impairments. The charity uses equipment to enable Blind and Visually Impaired people to be as independent as possible and enjoy life to the full. KVIN were planning a move to smaller premises and needed help to identify which IT equipment to take with them. Jon worked alongside a small team of Visually Impaired Volunteers and advised them on which equipment was redundant or obsolete, and which would be valuable to use in the new office following KVIN’s relocation. They then sensitively disposed of anything which no longer worked and passed on the kit which could still be used elsewhere to another charity who could make use of this overseas. Jon also carried out additional research for KVIN to help their volunteers use the organisation’s cloud based Office 365 system with their speech output software.
If you are a Kirklees Business interested in a volunteering project (either as a one-off or on a regular basis) please contact: Sharron Wilkinson at Volunteering Kirklees sharron@vkirklees.org.uk tel. 01484 519053
How did it go?
Jon said:
“I was really pleased to be a member of the KVIN team for the day, and was made to feel extremely welcome. KVIN are doing great work in the community so it was rewarding to be able to help out”.
KVIN commented:
“With our move date looming, we were delighted when Volunteering Kirklees put us in touch with Jon from Microsoft. Jon worked hard all day with our VI (blind and visually impaired) Volunteers. He was great and we couldn’t have done what needed to be done without his help. So huge thanks to Jon, and to Microsoft for participating in CSR”.