The fact that 6,000 disabled people have volunteered to organise and run the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics is no surprise to us here at Transform.

For the past 18 months we have been running Access to Volunteering, a £2m grant scheme aimed at helping disabled people volunteer.

Just under 400 organisations were given small grants of up to £5,000 to explore how barriers for disabled volunteers could be overcome.

These included logistical blocks such as no specialist equipment, financial obstacles like transport costs, a lack of opportunities for disabled volunteers, and the negative perceptions they met.

A mixture of sports, environmental, arts, music, garden, community, counselling, heritage, disability, youth, health and social organisations received Access to Volunteering grants.

In addition to practical benefits such as increased skills, training and experience, participating volunteers also reported increased self-confidence, reduced isolation and less social exclusion.

Adrian, who is bipolar, enjoyed meeting people and getting involved in a conservation project with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust where he built dry stonewalls, cut meadows and learnt coppicing

“My health and wellbeing are massively improved. I feel more confident about my own abilities. I am more stable and find it easier to trust other people.”

Nearly 7,000 disabled volunteers were supported in three regions by Access to Volunteering, of which around 67% were new to volunteering. This represents £290 per volunteering position created.

Whilst employment was not a goal for all volunteers, 11% of organisations indicated volunteers had found jobs after taking part in Access to Volunteering projects.

The volunteers also impacted positively on the organisations they worked with, increasing awareness and dispelling mistaken belief sabout disabled people.

Whizz Kidz received a £5,000 grant to develop the life skills of young disabled people. Diana Langford, Whizz-Kidz Volunteer Coordinator said:

“It’s been great to see the improvement in the way we work with disabled volunteers over such a short space of time. This funding has given us the opportunity to be more inclusive and more effective in recruiting and training these potential volunteers.”

The majority of grant recipients interviewed intended to continue working with disabled volunteers beyond the funding period whilst all of the volunteers interviewed felt more positive about volunteering in future.

This is good news for disabled volunteers, the organisations they work with, and for wider society. Disabled people have a valuable contribution to make, in their local communities and at a national level as in 2012.

That’s why the evaluation and learning from Access to Volunteering is being shared so that more volunteers and organisations can build mutually fulfilling, long-lasting relationships.