Hands up if you want to volunteer! September 5, 2008

Volunteering: it doesn’t pay*, well maybe not right away… but when it comes to application time, it can set you apart from the rest, demonstrate your self-motivation and drive, and get you that dream job. If you have your heart set on a popular career path, like medicine, veterinary science, theatre, journalism, or clinical psychology, then one of the most common ways to get necessary work experience is through volunteering. Indeed, for other careers too, volunteering is a great way to get concrete examples to use when answering tough interview questions like “describe a time when you had to work with someone very different to yourself”, “how have you dealt with setbacks?” and “what motivates you?”.

Volunteering is not just about spending a couple of hours a week in the local Oxfam shop. You can volunteer in social work as a mentor, work in local radio, organise music events for charity, preserve environmentally protected areas, work from home as a website tester/adviser, and much more. The Community Service Volunteering (CSV) website is a great place to start to find UK-based opportunities and training. There is a range of work from weekend one-offs in London, to full-time 4-12 month placements with paid accommodation and living allowance (volunteering that does pay…).

You may have heard of the Millenium Volunteers scheme as a recognised way of getting your volunteering certificated. This scheme has recently closed (perhaps because the millenium was a few years back…), but there is still a related framework called vinspired targeted at young people (16-25 year olds). This can help you find volunteering work, provide local support, and there is the option to work towards a v50 award to recognise over 50 hours of volunteer service. The website provides contacts, advice and an opportunities search that can select by location and activity. For more general information about the v programme, the organisation behind it also has a website at wearev.

Fancy seeing the world? Volunteering can certainly take you to the parts no tour company would ever reach, and make you a valued member of another community. The book World Volunteers: the world guide to humanitarian and development volunteering provides informative profiles on a range of organisations from around the world that will take both skilled and unskilled volunteers. It’s a new addition to our library, so seek it out if you are interested in getting beyond the more familiar, heavily-marketed schemes. It’s great to see that this guide includes a good number of opportunities that are subsidised, that don’t require you to raise thousand of pounds in funds before you go which I think can put people off volunteering abroad.

If your volunteering has become your vocation, and you want to get into international development as a career, check out Jeff’s blog, Getting into development. He will be providing valuable news, opportunities and advice. He recently mentioned an event called forum3, a charity jobs fair that is well worth checking out for both global and UK work, paid and un-paid. It’s on the 10th-11th October at the Business Design Centre, Islington, London.

* (“Volunteering: it doesn’t pay” T-shirt available from  BustedTees.com)