February 2021
Welcome to the monthly volunteer update!
Firstly, a big thank you and well done for volunteering at your local parkrun. parkrun is truly an event for the community, organised by the community, and by helping out as a volunteer, your contribution helps to make the event sustainable. We hope that you enjoyed your recent experience as a volunteer and welcome back soon.
If this is your first visit to the Volunteer Hub, please take your time to look around. Here you’ll be able to find everything you need to know about parkrun, all gathered together in one place. Whether you’re curious about how to start up your own parkrun, how the Virtual Volunteer App works or taking part with a dog, you’ll be able to find the answer here.
Barcode scanning
Currently, all events that are open around the world are operating under our COVID-19 Framework that we developed and published in August 2020, and we’re delighted that it is working so well. One aspect of the Framework is to minimise queuing for barcode scanning after the event by ensuring that there is a ratio of at least one barcode scanner for every 50 people taking part.
So we’d just like to again encourage everyone to give barcode scanning a go, to help ensure that we can achieve this target, keep the scanning queues flowing smoothly, and minimise crowding. It’s also a volunteer role that you can do after you finish - it doesn’t matter if you only scan a few people, it all helps. All you need to do is download the Virtual Volunteer on to your smartphone - you can do it right now! - speak to the volunteer coordinator at your event, and then you’re ready to scan.
Incident Reporting
We’re really proud of our incident reporting system, which with around 10,000 incidents reported globally each year, is possibly the most comprehensive such system of its type in the world. Through accurately recording incidents, we help to ensure the safety of future events, and by analysing our data on critical incidents, we have taken actions - like the introduction of AEDs at events - that have saved many lives.
Here are some key reminders for those responsible for incident reporting:
- Please always fill out an incident report, no matter how small the incident. Through reporting all incidents, we can understand when incidents occur repeatedly at events for similar reasons.
- Include the names and parkrun IDs of those involved.
- Please only include one incident per report. If there are multiple incidents, please complete a separate report for each one
- For incidents where there is a threat to life or immediate threat to the welfare of an individual, please deal with the incident first, and then call the Critical Incident Line to report it. Here you can also obtain ICE details and receive support relating to that incident if required.
For more information about incident reporting, and for a list of telephone numbers for the Critical Incident Line, click here.
Keeping the community together
Around the world, events in many countries remain closed, and we know that people miss parkrun terribly. But whilst it might not be quite the same as meeting up on a Saturday or Sunday morning, the parkrun community has strived to stay virtually connected through (not)parkrun and our social media channels. Sometimes this makes more of a difference than we know, as Event Ambassador Paul Relf from Australia writes:
“We’ve been back a couple of months now, and I’m still receiving thanks from parkrunners for the random Facebook posts I put up on my local parkrun page over the shutdown period. I didn’t realise that while I was in a good place, many others weren’t, and were looking out for our positive posts. While not too much for me to write, the posts gave many that extra hope they needed in the hard times. Their thanks really hit home that “we will get through this together”.
A big thank you to everyone that has contributed to help keep spirits up and remind everyone that we will be back.
Thanks for reading. We’ll be back with another update at the end of March. Until then, wherever you are in the world, stay safe, keep active, and if you’re close to a parkrun event that’s open - see you at the weekend.
