Voluntary Work

Voluntary Work can be an excellent and satisfying way to develop your skills and experience while also helping the community.

What is voluntary work?

Voluntary work is you giving your time for free to work for a particular charity or cause. This can involve anything from conservation work in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, to volunteering on a Management committee for a Homeless shelter, to helping children with learning difficulties to read to working in a local charity shop.

Why would I do voluntary work?

Voluntary work is done by many people out of a desire to help others and put something back into the community. It can be very satisfying and fulfilling. It has the potential to be of benefit not only to the people you are helping, but also your own development.

• Working in a new, different and often challenging environment can provide you with valuable skills of benefit in the workplace.
• It can give you rich and rewarding experiences that you haven't encountered before in your everyday or work life.
• It’s a great way to gain work experience and fill skills and experience gaps that you may have to assist your career progression.
• Your experience of voluntary work may give you insights into new areas of interest and talent that inform your career development in the future.
• Voluntary and community work can impress potential employers and make you stand out from other candidates when it is on your application.

How do I make the most of voluntary work?

Volunteering can be of benefit to your personal development; however it is important that you enter into it with a genuine desire to help and a willingness to give it the time, commitment and dedication that it deserves.

• Take time to decide what you're interested in because working in an area you like will probably make the experience more rewarding.
• Consider the skills or experiences that you lack and then find an opportunity that would provide the chance for you to gain or develop this, for example if you do not have enough experience of dealing with the public, you may want to volunteer in a charity shop.
• Keep an open mind when it comes to things you'd never normally have considered.
• You could use your existing skills to help others; all projects need a support and management from admin and accounts to lawyers and builders. Whatever your expertise, there will be a project out there that needs it.

How can I get involved?

There are a number of different ways to get involved, you could: -

• Go to www.worktrain.gov.uk where you can search for voluntary work in your area.
• Contact some of the organisations dealing with voluntary work, there are lots out there like Millennium Volunteers (for young people aged 16- 24, www.milleniumvolunteers.gov.uk) and Timebank (www.timebank.org.uk). They'll be able to talk you through your options and get you into an area that you're interested in.
• Contact your local volunteer bureau. Download the details for the North Yorkshire Volunteer Bureau’s in Word format.

Note:

You will require Microsoft Word to view the Word documents. If you do not have Microsoft Word you can download the Microsoft Word Reader.