Volunteering in your spare time

NeilCr · 30 December 2018 at 6:06PM

I volunteer at our local CAB and have just started with a charity aimed at combatting loneliness and isolation in the over 50s. We have a local volunteer bureau which lists opportunities - currently it has over 12 pages of vacancies so definitely worth seeing if your area has one of these.

In terms of volunteering if you don't like people and you live by the coast, as I do, there are areas of beach/coastal walk etc that you can look after.

It's worth saying that volunteering is a two way process. Volunteers often get something from it - in my case I met my partner there!

Katiehound · 30 December 2018 at 10:27PM

If you have a dog with suitable temperament there are various therapy dog schemes to take your dog into nursing homes etc. Probably the best known is Pets As Therapy, but there are others.

Again if your dog is suitable you could go on to be a Blue Cross Educator. I did this for 5 years and loved it, but lost Katie my hound, and going in without a dog wasn't the same (for me, anyway.) You can be an educator without a dog too. Needed all across the country- check these links:
https://www.bluecross.org.uk/volunteer

Blue Cross hospital & rehoming centres welcome volunteers to help with the animals. I'm sure this is true for many animal welfare organisations.

chesky · 31 December 2018 at 12:45AM

Like NeilCr, I also volunteer with the CAB (and like him I still call it that, despite the National powers-that-be now telling us that it no longer is a bureau, just Citizens Advice). But I don't really think it would be PennyForThem's cup of tea, as it's people with a capital P.

moneyistooshorttomention · 31 December 2018 at 7:22AM

chesky wrote: »

Local environmental group for clearing up hedgerows or river banks.

I've done some of that - and, on the other hand, if there isn't such a group and you don't fancy starting one up personally = you can always just buy a litterpicker gadget (only costs a few £s) and do your own litterpicking (even if it's only having "your patch" - ie keeping the area around your own home clear of litter).

If you've got beaches near you - they need doing pretty often these days (quite apart from the fact that litter louts use them, as well as more normal people - the sea brings in further plastic rubbish at intervals).

Farway · 31 December 2018 at 10:56AM

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I've done some of that - and, on the other hand, if there isn't such a group and you don't fancy starting one up personally = you can always just buy a litterpicker gadget (only costs a few £s) and do your own litterpicking (even if it's only having "your patch" - ie keeping the area around your own home clear of litter).

If you've got beaches near you - they need doing pretty often these days (quite apart from the fact that litter louts use them, as well as more normal people - the sea brings in further plastic rubbish at intervals).

Round here my council provides the litter picking thingy, I used to do my area, there are other local groups here who regularly pick the verges near main roads.
Often "organised" informally via local FB group

alanq · 31 December 2018 at 1:01PM

PennyForThem wrote: »

Suggestions if you don't really like people?

Format, in your own home, books for people who are visually impaired or have dyslexia. Choose from a list provided a book that requires processing and that is perhaps of most interest to you. You are provided with photographs of the printed pages and a machine's attempt to convert these into MS Word text. As well as correcting any errors one must reformat the text into a required format that is easier to read or to be spoken by software.

Unless anything has changed recently one must have ones own licensed copy of MS Word. I tried using free starter and online cut down versions of MS Word and found them too slow to continue with the work beyond one book. There is also the potential issue of using software licensed for personal use even for non-commercial purposes.

http://www.seeingear.org/

Browntoa · 25 January 2019 at 8:55AM

Add local historical archives to the list.

My local hugeneot group and the chatham historic dockyard are always looking for volunteers for archiving , assisting visitors and in the first case ancestry research .

Smaller specialist groups are often desperate for volunteers.

Think about skills you have that may be unique

ibizafan_2 · 25 January 2019 at 12:01PM

I volunteer at our local hospital, working at the tea bar in Outpatients. There’s so many opportunities, including holding hands during cataract surgery, helping patients to eat, trolley service around the wards, and ‘befriending’ patients with no visitors, amongst a few. I’ve been doing it for six years, and wanted to volunteer in a completely different environment to that which I worked in. I have always worked with the public however, and wanted to continue in that kind of role.

SevenOfNine · 26 January 2019 at 6:19PM

I've decided to pursue something a bit 'outside the box' & certainly WAY out of my comfort zone, the Prison Advice Care Trust. Couple more security hoops to jump through though, & I'll limit myself to prisoner's families on visiting days in the prison.

DairyQueen · 5 February 2019 at 8:59PM

I am one of the 30+ volunteers who run our community shop. If you have one of these valuable facilities nearby then there are a variety of roles available: serving in the shop, ordering, collecting stock, stock-checking, cleaning, managing cash and accounts, pricing, to name just a few.

The essential people who deliver this service are 99% retired.

Volunteering in your spare time

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