The amazing impact of Commonwealth War Graves Volunteers

Commonwealth War Graves is taking the opportunity to shout about the amazing work our volunteers do. From helping the Foundation to supporting the work of the Commission, here’s more info about their impact.

Commonwealth War Graves Volunteers

Commonwealth War Graves runs various volunteer programmes across the Foundation and the Commission. Archive assistants, office volunteers, and many more activities are undertaken by our brilliant volunteers.

We’re eternally grateful to our volunteers at home and abroad for giving their time, energy, and support, whatever their role.

They also make an amazing impact. Here’s a quick snapshot of how Commonwealth War Graves volunteers help us across our various programmes.

Archive volunteers

What is the Archive Volunteers Programme?

Our Archive Volunteers are crucial to helping us safeguard our collective memory which is comprised of records covering over 100 years of the Commission’s history. 

They help us to clean and rehouse paper files of correspondence and other documents, ensuring that these records can be better preserved, and the information contained within can be retrieved by future generations. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, our Archive Volunteers continued to support us in cleaning up and expanding catalogue descriptions of the Commission’s meeting minutes remotely. 

This has helped to improve our catalogue information to be more descriptive, detailed, and accurate for researchers using the online archive catalogue.
Our volunteers have also been incredibly supportive in the roll-out of our Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) in 2021 by adding more meaningful and descriptive metadata to assets from our image library ensuring users can more easily find historical images as well as detailed and more accurate information about the images themselves.

The Impact of the Archive Volunteers Programme

• 10 Archives Volunteers since 2017
• Over 1500 volunteer hours since 2017
• Over 220 boxes of archival material repackaged since 2017
• Full descriptions created for 80 sets of Commission meeting minutes and uploaded to the online archive catalogue in 2020
• Metadata for over 2000 historical images added on our Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) since 2021

Commonwealth War Graves cannot thank our volunteers enough.  

Without their help, we would not have had the capacity to reach so many people and tell them about our work, and most importantly about the lives of the men and women that we remember.  They help us keep their stories alive.

CWGF Office Volunteers 

What is the Office Volunteers Programme?

We have very recently had three Office Volunteers join our team in Maidenhead, helping with the administration and mailings to our Members and Supporters.

We are incredibly grateful to our volunteers for the contribution that they make to our small dynamic team and for the time that they can give to our work each week.

It was wonderful to hear from them why they wanted to volunteer with us – either due to a personal connection to the World Wars or for how strongly they feel about the work of the Commission and Foundation. 

The Impact of our Office Volunteers 

Since we have had the Office Volunteers join us, they have already contributed over 44 hours of activity to the Foundation Team and have sent out hundreds of letters, membership packs and fundraising materials to our supporters and members.

From all of us at the CWGF, we would like to extend a huge thank you to our Office Volunteers who contribute so much to the day-to-day running of our charity! You are each making such a big difference to our work. 

Sustainability Research Programme

What is the Sustainability Research Programme?

Maintaining cemeteries all over the world presents a myriad of challenges and opportunities as we transition to more sustainable ways of working. 

As part of enabling this transition, we have identified subject areas where we need to know more, in order to better inform decision-making and optimise progress. 

To assist with deriving the information we are seeking, we have outlined a diverse range of research projects to deliver, and these sit within our continually evolving Sustainability Research Program.

The research projects within this Programme are being steadily undertaken by our Sustainability Research Volunteers. 

The Impact of the Sustainability Research Programme

Our volunteers have completed a diverse range of research projects that will help us to combat climate change, protect biodiversity and promote a circular economy. These projects include the following:

• Assessing the predicted impacts of climate change at our sites in Europe, under different climate change scenarios and timeframes
  Identifying sites at most risk of flooding in Belgium and the Netherlands (now & in the medium term)
• Reviewing and proposing the most appropriate carbon foot-printing tool for typical CWGC projects
  Calculating the carbon footprint for the production and installation of a headstone, for a selection of stone materials and transport routes
• Researching the different methodologies global organisations are using to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the purchase of goods and services, and capital goods 
  Mapping our sites in Belgium against the Natura 2000 Network (areas protected for their habitats and species) and water protection zones
• Desk-based assessments of biodiversity at selected sites in the UK
  Reviewing the literature on how biodiversity at arid sites can be enhanced
• Researching the alternatives available to using single-use plastic tree guards

Our Sustainability Research Volunteers continue to generate knowledge and collate information that will support the decisions made as the Commission transitions to more sustainable working practices.
 
In return, the volunteers gain experience in undertaking research within the field of environmental sustainability for an organisation that values their contribution.

Thank you to all the Sustainability Research Volunteers who have given freely of their time and skills. Their valuable research is contributing to our knowledge base, which will in turn support our efforts to combat climate change, protect biodiversity and promote a circular economy. 

Want to volunteer with Commonwealth War Graves?

We always want to hear from anyone interested in volunteering with us!

Head over to the Volunteering page to discover the latest opportunities.