Imagine sung to the tune of the Twelve Days of Christmas:

“40 skills a swapping, 21 Net Impacters Networking, 10 Mixtape songs a singing, 3 mince pies eaten (by me), 2 speakers speaking, one Christmas tree…”

That’s the song-based summary of Tinsel, Time and Treats event run by Net Impact, London earlier this month. The event brought together professionals from a range of sectors for a festive gathering and for Spots of Time and fellow social enterprise Ecomodo, a chance to share what we get up to. Both of our organisations are about giving and sharing; for Ecomodo it’s about making lending and borrowing everyday objects, skills and spaces easy, and for ourselves at Spots of Time it’s about making it easy for people to give small moments of their time to provide fun activities to benefit others in local communities.

What Tinsel, Time and Treats really demonstrated for me was the abundance of skills and talents that everyone has. Often these lie beneath the surface, easily forgotten in the everyday rush. I found someone who I could practise French with, two ladies who wanted to take me up on some piano lessons and a famous French onion soup recipe all in an hour!

And with this year’s festive season coming alongside an ongoing economic crisis finding new ways to share skills and give our time is increasingly important. At Spots of Time we’re hoping that 2012 can see us grow what we do to reach across London and get people giving time who might never have done so before. It might be just sharing a cup of tea but for us it’s about widening the circles of people you share meaningful moments with and recognising the importance and value this can have. Ultimately we hope that in the same way social networks have scaled and grown in a way that people didn’t initially imagine, that using these very technologies the ways we share and give time can grow too.

We’d love network members to get involved – you can book a time to volunteer at http://spotsoftime.org.uk/ Or if you know an organisation that might be interested in hosting Spots of Time volunteers , or you work for a company that would like to get involved then do get in touch with phillippa@spotsoftime.org.uk

Phillippa Banister
Spots of Time