8 vInspired

Before you watch

1 SPEAKING   Work in pairs. Answer the questions.
1 Is volunteering popular among young people in your country?
2 Have you ever done any volunteering? If yes, what did you do?
3 Why do you think people volunteer?

Comprehension check
2 ⊲   Watch the DVD clip. Choose the correct answers.
1 What is vInspired?
a an award  ​ b a charity  ​c  a magazine
2 Young people in the UK are thought to be:
a unemployed.  ​ b lazy.  ​
c  really kind.
3 How can young people find out about vInspired?
a from school  ​b  from attending a group  ​c  from a website

3 ⊲   Watch again. Number the activities (A–H) in the order that you see them.
A   a volunteer helping children
B   young people playing in an orchestra
C   volunteers on a farm
D   teenagers playing computer games
E   a volunteer preparing food
F   a volunteer working in a shop
G   volunteers picking up rubbish on a beach
H   teenagers playing pool

4 ⊲   Watch again. Complete the summary with the words below.

awards campaigns charities lazy recognised unemployment ​
voluntary website

vInspired organises 1 to help young people find 2 work. They also give
3
to young volunteers. These are important because they ensure young people’s efforts get
4
. Lots of people think young people can’t find a job because they are 5 , but this
6
isn’t true. Youth is very high in the UK which makes it quite hard to be a young person. Young
people can find out about vInspired from their 7 . It has over 2,500 8 on it with
volunteering projects across the country.

Round up
5 SPEAKING   Work in groups. Answer the question.
What kind of volunteering would you most like to do? Why?

Solutions Third Edition Upper-Intermediate  DVD worksheet 8 photocopiable © Oxford University Press
 Vocabulary
6 RECYCLE   Choose the correct words.
1 Thousands of people protested / shouted about youth unemployment.
2 vInspired doesn’t sign / shout slogans to get its message across.
3 Instead of holding / holding up a rally to change people’s opinions of teenagers, vInspired run national awards to
celebrate the work young people do.
4 They march / organise campaigns to help unemployed young people find volunteer work.
5 With corruption / unemployment so high, it’s really difficult for young people to find a job at the moment.

7 Complete the text with the words below.

carers community scheme society youth group

The Riverside Club

It seems that we live in a 1 that often forgets about its youngest and oldest members. The
Riverside Club is a 2 that organises lots of events that try and get young people involved in the
local 3 . One 4 that it runs trains young people to be 5 for elderly
people. The elderly people benefit from the help they receive, while the younger people can learn a lot from
spending time with someone with many more years of life experience.

Extension
8 Work in groups. Make a presentation that gives your opinion on which volunteer project for your class to
get involved with is the most important and why:
• helping at an old people’s home
• picking up rubbish from the local park and cleaning the local river
• teaching your language to new immigrants in your city
• cooking meals for homeless people
• helping young children to read at the local primary school
• helping at an animal shelter

9 Give your presentation to the class. Use the key phrases for expressing a firm opinion.

Expressing a firm opinion

I’m of the opinion that …
I feel quite strongly that …
It’s clear to me that …
I firmly believe that …

Solutions Third Edition Upper-Intermediate  DVD worksheet 8 photocopiable © Oxford University Press
 8 DVD teacher’s notes

DVD clip summary

The DVD clip is about the work of vInspired, a British charity that helps young people find volunteering work.

Background
vInspired is a leading youth charity that was launched in 2006, as part of a government-backed scheme to get more
young people (aged 16–25) involved in volunteering and community projects. Since it was set up, vInspired has
helped over 1 million young people to find volunteering opportunities in their community. It believes that through
volunteering, young people will be more prepared to enter the world of work, and will be more employable. It is also
aware of how damaging extended periods of unemployment can be to mental health, and how having something
to do, can inspire young people to be more proactive. As well as helping young people, the charity recognises the
benefits that volunteering brings to communities.
Initially, the charity received most of its funding from the government, but in 2012 this was cut, and the charity had
to make severe cuts to staff and the projects that it could support. Since then, the charity has had to become more
creative in how it raises money and more selective about who it can help.

Before you watch

Exercise 1
• Read the questions with the class and elicit answers from individual students. Encourage the students to expand on
their answers and use their suggestions to start a class discussion.
• Answers: Students’ own answers

Comprehension check
Exercise 2
• Pre-watching: Go through the questions with the students.
• ⊲   Play the whole DVD clip. The students choose the correct answers. Check their answers.
• Answers: 1  b  ​2 b  ​3 c
Exercise 3
• Pre-watching: Ask the students to read the list and to try and remember the order that they saw the things in the
DVD clip.
• ⊲   Play the DVD clip to check the answers.
• Answers: 1  C  ​2 H  ​3 D  ​4 A  ​5 F  ​6 G  ​7 B  ​8 E
Exercise 4
• Pre-watching: Ask the students to try and complete the text with the words before they watch the DVD clip again.
• Weaker classes: Check the students understand all the words. Then play the DVD clip and pause after each answer.
• ⊲   Play the DVD clip to check the answers.
• Answers: 1  campaigns  ​2 voluntary  ​3 awards  ​4 recognised  ​5 lazy  ​6 unemployment  ​7 website  ​
8  charities

Round up
Exercise 5
• Put the students in groups. Give them a few minutes to discuss the question.
• Answers: Students’ own answers

Solutions Third Edition Upper-Intermediate  DVD teacher’s notes 8 photocopiable © Oxford University Press
 Vocabulary
Exercise 6
• Ask the students to read through the sentences first, then choose the correct words.
• Weaker classes: Elicit the meanings of the words first.
• Answers: 1  protested  ​2 shout  ​3 holding  ​4 organise  ​5 unemployment
Exercise 7
• Ask the students to read through the sentences first, before they complete them. With a weaker class, you could
elicit the meanings of the words first.
• Answers: 1  society  ​2 youth group  ​3 community  ​4 scheme  ​5 carers

Extension
Exercises 8 and 9
• Materials needed: None
• Preparation: Put the students in groups. Tell them they are going to discuss different volunteer projects.
• Language: Elicit ways to express a firm opinion. Focus on the key phrases.
• Activity: Ask the students to nominate one note-taker in the group. Give the students 5–8 minutes to talk
about the subject and make notes. Encourage them to use the language of expressing firm opinions in
their discussion. Then ask one student from each group to present their chosen project to the class.
• Extension: Ask the students to make a poster or leaflet promoting their chosen volunteering project.

Solutions Third Edition Upper-Intermediate  DVD teacher’s notes 8 photocopiable © Oxford University Press
 8 DVD script

vInspired
This is the head office of a charity called vInspired. They organise campaigns to help
unemployed young people find volunteer work. They also reward this excellent work
through their national awards scheme.
Every year we run the vInspired national awards, which is the country’s biggest celebration
of young volunteers. We have some young people who spend hours and hours every single
week, doing wonderful things for their communities, but they just don’t get heard about so
the vInspired national awards are about celebrating those young people and making sure
that their efforts get recognised.
These award ceremonies are an important part of vInspired’s work because they get the
media to represent young people more positively. Stereotypes about young people are
everywhere. People think that if you’re young, you are lazy and if you were less lazy, you
would easily find a job. If only you’d worked hard enough, you’d have found a job already.
But for the majority of young people this simply isn’t true. Rather than shouting slogans
or holding rallies about it, vInspired are leading the protest against these negative
stereotypes in other ways.
In the UK, we’ve got a massive image problem for young people, they are considered to be
lazy, considered to be good for nothing, youth unemployment figures are very high in the
UK so it’s very difficult for young people to really kind of talk about the good things that
they have to offer.
At the moment it’s quite hard to be a young person. It’s quite hard to feel good about
what you have to offer society, when one in four young people doesn’t even have a job.
But volunteering can give young people a sense of something good to offer their society,
something positive that they can do and just give them that boost that they need to kind of
go forward with their careers and their lives.
We run a website called vInspired.com and it’s an online marketplace for young people to
link up with volunteering opportunities in charities all over the country. At the moment we
have 2,500 charities registered on that website and 145,000 young people use that website
to find opportunities and also to log their volunteering hours, so that they have a great
record of all the time and effort they’ve put into their volunteering work.
If people could only see the excellent work young volunteers do all over the UK, they
might change their opinions on the youth of today. From individual carers, to youth
groups fighting to improve their local communities, there are many inspiring stories.
Thousands of young people across the UK want to do good work. All they need is the
opportunity to make this happen.

Solutions Third Edition Upper-Intermediate  DVD script 8 photocopiable © Oxford University Press