Early in 2019, Vikas Pisal was elected as team leader of the Volunteer Engagement Team (VET). In the following months he started creating a number of process documents for the team to expand on: VET Mission, Strategy, On-boarding, and FAQ. His main focus was on a new on-boarding process for teams to use. As many teams were not aware of the VET, there was a battle to gain awareness of its goals.

Over the following months, the team unfortunately didn’t gain traction due to lack of manpower. In October 2019, Jaz re-ignited the team by re-structuring it to have at least one member from each department acting as a representative within the team, alongside the other members and contributors. In her vision, a department representative is someone who knows Joomla and its community, someone who is engaging, committed, positive, and can share their knowledge and experience. The aim was to better position the team in its main areas of involvement: recognition, retention, and recruitment. 

During the first meeting with the new members, everyone agreed on the importance of the team and its activities, especially given the current situation where volunteers are being stretched to their breaking points because new volunteers are unfortunately few in number. Rowan explained how the team started and what her original visions for the team were. The team then discussed a number of principals and ideas that will continue to be formulated over time. One focus of the discussion was how Joomla can be more positive in its image. Another was how to address the negativity and conflict that creeps in on various platforms. 

The full meeting report can be viewed here: https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/volunteer-engagement-team/reports/1114-vet-meeting-28th-october-2019 

Following this, the team is now active and is holding regular meetings to further work on its goals. In January, some of the team members attended the Forum for the Future event in Spain which enabled the team to meet in person and to attend the different streams of the event. The team members now have objectives that they will be working towards in the coming months which will compliment the team’s three main goals: Recognition, Retention, Recruitment.

The report from the Engagement Stream of FftF can be viewed here:

https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/volunteer-engagement-team/reports/1156-forum-for-the-future-re-engage-re-ignite-stream-re 

By March 2020, the next team leader will have been elected and will continue to lead the team in facilitating its ideas and further integrating the team into the Joomla ecosystem.