Every year, over 20 million people across England and the UK volunteer, donating more than 100 million hours to their communities every week – the majority of which are over 50. It has been estimated that the economic value of this activity is worth in excess of £40 billion to our economy.

The central role of volunteers has been even clearer over the last few months with The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which couldn’t have happened without the efforts and dedication of the 70,000 Games Makers at these events.

But volunteering has an even greater value than ensuring our essential community services function and national events are a success. Every year, millions of people help others in all sorts of ways, most of which they probably wouldn’t even think of as volunteering.

This makes a crucial contribution to binding our communities, building cooperation and trust between individuals, and helping to make our communities better places to live and work.

Have you ever thought about volunteering? We’d love to hear from you with your experiences.