The purpose of creating this consultancy was to bring talented people from within the third sector together to form a strong support network to other third sector organisations and individuals. Details of other associates will appear here over the next few weeks. Our company launches April 2007.

John Barkus

John Barkus started a responsible and professional management consultancy directly after leaving Volunteer Centre Southwark (www.volunteercentres.org.uk), where John was Director for seven years, building one of the strongest and busiest Volunteer Centres in England. John has used his vast experience and contacts to form a management consultancy that works for and with the Third Sector. With each contract John forms a strong team who work with you towards a shared goal of development. A short biography of John follows:

John Barkus started his career in the financial sector working for Barclays. Whilst working full time, John studied Social Policy, Psychology and Criminology with the Open University as a mature student and eventually moved into the voluntary sector working for the National Association of Victims Support Schemes.

John has a long history of voluntary involvement and at the age of 15 he organised a charity fun run in his community for over 1,000 local people. John has volunteered in a number of different organisations including a disabled horse-riding school, telephone support line, charity shop and has been a trustee of a local charities and various national charities including Volunteer Development England, Volunteering England (www.volunteering.org.uk) and the international children's charity webplay (www.webplay.org)

In 1999 John helped set up Southwark Cares one of the ten pilot ‘Cares’ Employer Supported Volunteering projects in partnership with Business in the Community (www.bitc.org.uk) and Volunteers in Action Southwark to increase employee volunteering from the corporate world. The project now branded Business Volunteers forms part of the core work of Volunteer Centre Southwark. 

In 2000 John successfully applied to the British Youth Council (funded by the Millennium Commission) to part fund a fact-finding trip to the US to look into community involvement in four different US Cities: Atlanta; San Francisco; Los Angeles; and New York. The month long visit proved to be a big success, harvesting many ideas which were then implemented at Volunteers in Action Southwark, such as redevelopment of the website to include volunteer registration, corporate community days, first time volunteer orientation training days and engaging faith communities. Due to its success of the project John was granted the lifetime membership of the Millennium Awards Fellowship by The Earl of Dalkeith, Chair of the Millennium Awards Committee.

You can contact John through John@JohnBarkus.com