Flock Local is a brand new project, born just up the river in Stockbridge. It aims to make it easy for volunteers to find out about and connect up with events. We think it looks like a great idea, and so we asked James Baster, the man behind the website - who's a volunteer himself, to write a guest post for our blog. He writes:

I'm James, and I'm a volunteer. In the past I've volunteered as a steward for Oxfam at festivals and I've helped put on theatre plays with evil clowns and cabaret's upstaged by a 6 year-old. I've ran award-winning festival venues and helped run the central Edinburgh community arts-space, the Forest Cafe.

Clearly, I generally believe in volunteering – as a way to make a positive difference to your community, to develop your own skills and to get you out of the house meeting 6-year olds who are going to be big stars.

 But this is the important thing – I think most people do. Talking to people I find many people want to volunteer, but faced with the impression that this will require on-going commitment, interviews and references, general apathy usually wins out.

Sure, sometimes those things are essential depending on what the activity is. But there are
 many opportunities to easily help out, to just turn up and spend the afternoon working, and then retire down the pub, with no fuss.

Which is why I'm happy to reveal our new website,
 http://www.flocklocal.net. This is a tool-set designed to encourage groups and volunteers towards just these opportunities. We make it easy to search opportunities, see details about them and sign up to attend.

For groups, posting opportunities is easy and free. And more 
than just a listings site, we encourage volunteers to spread word of events to their friends by social media like Twitter and Facebook and for a sense of community to build around groups and users. We're planning on developing tools to allow people to come together with other like-minded souls and organise their own events.

At the moment, the site's looking a little bare – but then we did only go public 3 days ago. Keep an eye out, and if you want to organise a event, give us a try! I leave you with a recommendation for volunteering, and this thought: flyering on the royal mile in august dressed as a evil clown? Great fun.