Making better use of volunteering

The Comoodle project is intended to bring people together to share resources and skills with a view to saving time and money, and doing more work with less waste.

Kirklees Council’s chief service officer Rachael Loftus, who is at the helm of the project, said: “It could be when one person has a lawnmower and one person has a strimmer – it’s about creating a better sharing economy.

“The right level of bureaucracy in the right places will help us to achieve it.”

She said projects that would likely be rolled out in Kirklees included volunteer visits to elderly people to fight loneliness.

She also suggested a mentoring programme for young men, possibly lead by older men who had previously been in involved with crime or drugs and wanted to make a positive contribution to avoid young people making similar mistakes.

The council has been given €1m to get the project off the ground as part of a broader programme called Cities of Service, which was set up former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.

Kirklees was one of only a handful of councils across the globe chosen to take part in the volunteer and resource sharing project.

Visit www.comoodle.comfor more information.