Multilingual Volunteering Guidance for NAVCA in time for Volunteers’ Week

The National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) is the national membership body for infrastructure organisations in England, supporting the voluntary and community sector to amplify the voice of local infrastructure. Altogether, NAVCA members support over 165,000 charities and community groups.

NAVCA’s local voluntary and community organisations have a powerful role to play in creating inclusive, thriving multicultural neighbourhoods and in building volunteering opportunities that reflect the richness of the communities they support.

NAVCA shares support and best practice on a range of topics, providing training and resources for people working in voluntary and community organisations, sharing information about emerging and important issues facing their members helping them to lead, inspire and build confidence across the movement.

The ATC’s new resources on ‘Volunteering and Multilingual Communities’ guide NAVCA members on how to engage their local multicultural community and increase volunteer diversity through multilingual support, covering topics such as representation, connection, language and language services, concluding with a 10-step guide to more inclusive volunteering.

Launched in Volunteers’ Week in June 2025, the resources lead NAVCA members through the process of identifying local community languages, breaking down the language barriers, building relationships and trust, and guiding them on how to scope out their needs for language support pointing them toward ATC members as the providers of choice.

ATC Commercial & Collaborations Lead Sarah Bawa Mason believes this is a big step in the right direction: “Many community and voluntary groups and organisations offer amazing opportunities to connect with local multicultural and multilingual communities. I believe this guide will help them to leverage the language capability they already have within their reach while providing solid guidance for meeting the needs they cannot cover internally via ATC members.”

NAVCA Communications Officer Emily Lewis said, “These are really useful, clear and easy-to-understand resources and they fill a gap in our existing guidance, I know our members will appreciate them.”

The ATC’s collaboration with NAVCA continues the association’s work on supporting member companies to collaborate with charities and the NGO sector. If your company supports organisations in the charity and NGO sector, remember check your ATC Member Directory Profile is up to date to include ‘Charities’ as a specialist sector focus.

You may also find these ATC Charity Translators Guides useful:

ATC/Charity Translators Brief Guide to Supporting Charities 2022

ATC/Charity Translators Quick Guide to Language Support for Charities 2022