Holly Penalver founded Indigo Volunteers 10 years ago to offer an ethical route for people who want to help.

Indigo has been one of our key partners since we were founded by providing us with our most important resource – volunteers! But Indigo is more than that – it is at the heart of a support network helping another 50 grass-roots organisations, across 10 countries and in total has supplied about 3,500 people.

We talk about what a huge missed opportunity it is that larger NGOs don’t use more volunteers. And what a beautiful thing it is for people to come together and enjoy volunteering. That should be something to celebrate!

But volunteering can be an isolating experience, it exposes your inability to help with everything and it can be extra tough when you return.