Oxfam festival volunteers go green with sharing economy tech
Norwich (PRWEB UK) 8 April 2015 -- Oxfam GB’s Festival Stewarding Team has unveiled a new partnership with the UK’s largest shared travel site Liftshare.com, in a move to offer an enhanced car-sharing option to their 5,000+ festival volunteers throughout the 2015 season through a dedicated Oxfam Stewards group.
Stewarding is an opportunity for volunteers to donate their time and energy to Oxfam, in return for access to some of the UK’s best music festivals each summer. With over 20 years’ experience in the field, they provide the most established and recognizable volunteering operation within the UK festival scene.
Stewards perform many roles, including ticket checking, wrist-banding, providing assistance at info points and helping to ensure the safety and well-being of revellers at the nation’s best-loved festivals, including Glastonbury, Bestival, WOMAD, Leeds and Reading. Not only does stewarding give everyday people access to a side of festivals the public don’t usually see, it’s great fun and a fantastic way to support fundraising for Oxfam’s crucial work tackling poverty worldwide.
Liftshare has a community of over 420,000 members. This new dedicated group will help stewards arrange car shares with other Oxfam festival volunteers, enabling them to save money by splitting petrol costs while reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being spent on journeys. With fewer cars on the road and more seats filled, festivals will get ever closer to their green targets.
Stewards are encouraged to search for lifts or offer up their spare seats using Liftshare’s on-site tech, or by downloading either the site’s free Android or iOS apps to gain access to cashless payments, in-app messaging and more great features designed to take the hassle out of shared travel.
Oxfam Marketing Exec. Clare Williamson says “We’re thrilled to be offering our volunteers easier lift sharing through the technology Liftshare provides, and we hope using the app on-site for last-minute plans will encourage stewards to help each other out more than ever before.”
This partnership is further proof of the sharing economy’s rapid expansion in the UK, following recent projections that the sector will be worth £9 billion by 2025* and the recent launch of sharing economy trade union SEUK, of which Liftshare is a founding member.
Commenting on the partnership, Liftshare founder Ali Clabburn said, “We’re super excited to be helping the amazing Oxfam Volunteers save money getting to festivals. Working with Glastonbury in 1999 was our first real success and we’ve loved helping fans get to festivals ever since.”
-ENDS-
Editor’s notes:
Liftshare.com is part of the sharing economy, a global sector of new forward-thinking sites and charities that strive to make the world a more engaged, social, affordable and eco-friendly place through collaborative consumption.
Liftshare was conceptualised by founder Ali Clabburn, after posting lift requests on university forum boards in the late '90s. It now provides green travel solutions for local councils, universities, hospitals, businesses, music festivals and nationwide retail chains in a B2B capacity.
The site strives to help UK citizens banish transport poverty and social isolation by getting them travelling on the road together in a collaborative environment.
For further information on Liftshare, the sharing economy and car sharing, please contact [email protected] / +44 207 063 6640
David Cook, DigitasLBi, +44 207 063 6640, [email protected]
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