There’s been lots of interest in volunteering at the moment – but also concern about how to stay safe. To help you make an informed choice about your volunteering, we’ve gathered up the latest advice here.
Virtual volunteering
Firstly, there’s lots of volunteering you can do without leaving your home – such as virtual literacy support for young people, online tutoring with Age UK, or digital citizen science activities like Zooniverse.
Helping your neighbours
We’ve also seen lots of informal mutual aid groups pop up across the UK – you can find a list via our ‘helping your neighbours’ page. If you’re outside the UK, there may well be something similar near where you live.
If you are involved in this sort of informal volunteering, please make sure you're following current guidelines on social distancing.
In-person volunteering
Many charities are opening up their face-to-face volunteering programmes - you can find out what's on offer on our Volunteering Directory.
For these roles, it’s important that you follow the instructions of your volunteering manager – they will have risk assessed your activity to make sure you can do it as safely as possible. If you’re unsure or unhappy about anything, let them know – or get in touch with us at the Volunteering Service.
British Red Cross training
The British Red Cross have created some useful online training to help volunteers responding to COVID-19. If you are planning to volunteer - even informally - then we'd recommend you complete this training.
We’re here to help
You can view all of our current volunteering opportunities on our online directory. And feel free to contact us about any aspects of your volunteering – just drop us a line at [email protected]
Links
COVID-19 Volunteering opportunities