The ‘Pathways through Participation' project is a collaborative undertaking between IVR, NCVO and Involve, and started in April 2009.

The project explores how and why people get involved and stay involved in different forms of participation, including volunteering activities. Throughout, we understand participation in a very broad sense, that is: the act of taking part in a wide range of individual, social and public forms of engagement, such as volunteering in a charitable organisation, being a member of a local community group, being a local councillor or purchasing fair trade goods.

The project team has just produced its first tangible results - a website and a review of literature on participation. The website can be accessed here: http://www.pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/. The website brings together news of the project and valuable resources for practitioners, policy makers and researcher. We've received plenty of positive feedback on how useful the website is, even though it is only in its early stages.

The working papers and other outputs that the project team produces over time will become available on the website. If you or your organisation would like to be kept up-to-date on the project, you can subscribe to the newletter through the website.

One of the first papers produced by the project team (and available shortly on the website) is a review of literature on participation that we've worked on over the last few months. One of the aims of the literature review was to bring together diverse bodies of literature from, for instance, volunteering, community development and public participation.

Frequently these bodies of literature examine participation in isolation, and the team was keen to find out what we can learn when we look at these different ways of talking about participation together. One conclusion we draw is that by bringing different bodies of literature together we can develop a ‘round earth' view of participation. This is also reflected in the title which is: ‘Understanding Participation: Towards a "round earth view"'.

Colin Rochester (Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Voluntary and Community Action, Roehampton University ), a critical reviewer of this piece of work comments: ‘I have read [the literature review] with great interest and wanted to congratulate the team on a very important and clearly presented study. I think you have succeeded in bringing the material together in a really helpful and convincing framework and have indeed provided us with a 'round earth' map.'

We will also soon have decided where exactly we will carry out the research, and I will let you know as soon as I can. It would then be great to hear from interested individuals and groups in our chosen locations. In the meantime, should you want more details of the project, please contact Nina at IVR (nina.nissen@volunteeringengland.org)

Source: Nina Nissen (Participation Research Officer, IVR)