Ask Lemmy

I am still active at my local scouts troop. I'm not a group leader anymore (not enough time), though I'm responsible for the courses for new group leaders (those that are needed to start being a group leader in my scouts organization). Also I was the main author of our new song book and play guitar for the kids on various camps.

Besides that I currently try to get politically active with a leftist party here. Though I'm not sure, what I can contribute. We will see.

What crosses my mind again and again for quite a while now is joining or creating a neighborhood help group. Something to help people locally and tie the neighborhood together. Though I'm unsure on how to start that, find other people that would like to join, and also not sure about my own time constrains. Don't want to overwork myself with volunteering.

yeah i volunteer a lot. i do tasks that require knowledge and professional skills that actively contribute to make life better for everyone. i have done training for it and for it for years.

i don't do political stuff or homeless stuff, which is what most people seem to think volunteering is? and it makes people mad when they assume that and i say that's not what i do, i explain what i do, they tell me how stupid it is that I'm not getting paid for what I do... because well there are people who do what i do for volunteering that do get paid for it...

For anyone reading who needs help finding a group to help chip in with: check if you have a local Food Not Bombs chapter near you. They're a grassroots movement that helps feed whoever needs food on a regular schedule.

Alternatively, if you have a local Mutual Aid group (search your town/city name + 'mutual aid' to find them, or refer to this more in-depth guide if that fails), I'm sure they'd appreciate some help too! :)

While not really a volunteer position, I do spend a chunk of my free time picking up litter in my area. From snack wrappers to cigarette butts to midnight ditch tips, I've done it all.

Volunteer firefighter.

Drive the 3000L truck or 1000L tender. Run hoses to hydrant. Use mounted water cannon, or run hoses out. Put out, scrub, bush, structure, or vehicle fires. Rescue puppies from drains.

Getting plenty of training, learning lots of different equipment, have a good team currently.

Eg. Last week at training, I tried out the 'Hot Stick' high-voltage detector. For finding live wires, beeps when high current closeby.

Similar to this one.

I was a member of the US Coast Guard Auxiliary for 10 years. It’s a branch of the USCG made up entirely of civilian volunteers. We train to perform many of the same things the USCG does with the exception of law enforcement. I’ve done everything from tow broken down boats to searching for missing boats/people to escorting warships and tankers through harbors to providing security at fireworks and tall ship parades.

It's not quite volunteer work, but still donate to food banks seasonally, or monthly when I'm able to. I don't make a lot of money but I still donate what I can.

I had some crashes in life, I had to rely on food banks. I now give back. It feels amazing. I think a lot of people are afraid of the feelings involved honestly, it's a strong emotional ride when you donate stuff and see the faces of the people waiting in line for food, toiletries and things like socks and underwear.

Tool libraries rock! Have volunteered with our local one for years.

Also book libraries often can use volunteer assistance!

I volunteer at an "intergenerational meetup" and try to explain to older folks how computers and the Internet work. Every two weeks for 2 hours.

Did door knocking as a child to collect money for war memorials in Germany.

I volunteer on the board of an arts nonprofit

I volunteer at a small music festival. We're trying to help keep the village alive at a time when more and more facilities are closing. I run the website and social media, and take photos over the weekend.

Taking the photos is probably the most fun, as you get to be part of the festival and watch everyone enjoy the event you set up, as well as watching some of the acts. It's exhausting though, as you don't stop for the better part of three days.

This year I had a lot to do with booking the acts and liaising with the acts and the venues. That was really interesting, but it nearly killed me. I've got a chronic illness that tires me out, but I thought this would be ok as it's mostly emailing and messaging. I had no idea how many random things have to be organised and rearranged in the run up, or how much can go wrong on the day!

I'm sticking to photos next year!

I volunteer at a wildlife rehab clinic. I don't get to treat the animals, but we get to do all the other work. I feed them, clean their area, check them to make sure their recovery is going well, we weigh them, prep various food mixes and formulas. There's a ton of housekeeping like dishes, laundry, and sterilizing crates. I'll also greet people that arrive with animals and grab one of the staff to get the intake started.

We also have events where I've directed cars where to park, ran games for the kids, and answered animal questions. I got put on the open house planning group so I will help plan and build new activities, and if we we're able to get a new owl ambassador by then, I will run meet and greet things with it. I also got asked to help design some new shelters due the various raptors.

Our shifts are 4 hours, one day a week, from April through September, but I've been participating in random things over the winter.

I like working with animals because most of their injuries are caused by humans, and they are unable to advocate for themselves. I get to work with amazing people and see a ton of rare animals most people don't even know we have. It can be difficult to see severely injured animals, have a lot die on you, to see people crying bringing in hurt animals, especially little kids, but there is also the reward of seeing animals recover and return to their homes.

I'm mainly there for raptors, but the most touching story was a little boy found a bumble bee with a damaged wing. He took it to his parents and he wanted to help it. They dialed us up and he asked if we could fix his bee. We can often fix butterfly wings, but bees are too tiny, and he was near the end as it was, but we set that bee up in a terrarium with soft bedding and half an orange, and for the rest of his days, we took care of that bee like any other animal we'd get through our doors.

Big time. Most related to native plants. A lot of it is manual labor but there is a fair amount of conceptual work too.

At the moment I'm not involved with any group of volunteers, but I was a volunteer at a homeless reach out group for almost a year up until a couple months ago.

We would walk around a spot known for housing a lot of homeless people in the city and "door knock" until we met somebody who wanted to talk with us. It was very interesting, I had a lot of fun and we were more or less successful in helping our regulars get a step up. It being a new job, health check ups or getting them in contact with some social workers for some tricky situations (irregular immigration status).

We stopped because most of the regulars left and we lost contact over the winter. The group I was in also started fading due to all of us being students unable to find a compatible schedule. Some times I feel remorse in not continuing, I might have to try to find the contact of one of our oldest regulars and check up on how he is doing in his new home.

P.S.: One of the regulars Mr "Zé" would tell us all about his petty crime days in Paris, when he was a teen. He was a troubled man, even today, but very fun and kind within his means.

I started out fostering cats (mostly kittens) a few years ago. I switched to a different organization a little while back, and started also volunteering for a variety of administrative tasks in addition to fostering. I love the cats, but would like to get more regular in person human interaction.

I've only volunteered for things that don't require directly working with or talking to people. Dealing with people directly gives me panic attacks. I'd happily work in a soup kitchen, as long as I am in the back making the soup and not the front serving it.

And I certainly wouldn't want to do any door knocking even if I didn't get panic attacks. I wanna help people, not bother them.

I check JustServe to see what's available in my area. I do a monthly volunteer thing at a food pantry 30 minutes away. I've been wanting to look more into what volunteer stuff my town offers and possibly do more usher volunteer work like I did for the local community college.

We have a pro-bono program at work and I’m volunteering this month. We’ll basically be helping out non-profit orgs by providing free consultations on our topic of expertise.

I am a founding board member and the treasurer for my regional timebank. I also have done custom software development and IT work for my county and city food bank. In the past, I was a founding board member and technology specialist for the local food co-op. I also used to own and operate a community bike shop where I performed free repairs for anyone who said they couldn't afford it.

I prefer volunteer work that directly shores up my communities, promotes food security and social equity, connects local food producers to consumers as directly as possible, and empowers non-monetary exchange of labor and skills. For me, timebanks are the sweet spot for these goals. Everyone's time is valued equally, and everyone has something to offer their communities on an as-able basis. More than that, a timebank promotes members to see all in their community as peers and neighbors despite any superficial differences.

These days just surveying for the national bat and dormouse monitoring programmes, but I have done quite a range of other things in the past including: starting and running a Green Drinks group, pagan prison chaplain for the Pagan Fed, direct action with Greenpeace, local wildlife group committee member, starting and running a toad patrol group, helping at an old folks day centre, running a tea stall and car-parking at a few green festivals, crash and bash conservation work with various groups etc.

I've done stuff like building parks, search and rescue, maintaining trails, and a few other things that I guess you could describe as warm body where I was a guide of sorts.

I started doing it because my mom wanted me to do something when I was a teenager and kept doing it because I liked it and it looks good on a resume.

Who knows? Maybe I'll retire and become a park ranger or something one day.

I am a help a non profit that delivers food to unhoused people for free. it's really great and I feel I am really making a difference in the community. I highly suggest people try some volunteer work.

I volunteer usually doing horticultural related work on restoration projects and in urban farm spaces.

This includes everything from planting to weeding and even sees construction of things like garden beds and other platforms for growing

I was just thinking I would love to volunteer regularly. Completely forgot that the position I have within the org for my favorite hobby is actually a volunteer position. I joke I do the least that gets called an organizer.

For the last few years I have been heavily involved in scouts due to my kids. It's the first time I have had a volunteer role that felt semi-professional: I'm organizing other adults, managing money, planning events weeks or months in advance, etc. I didn't initially want to be so involved. I gradually volunteered for one role after another because shit needed to get done and nobody else was willing to do it. I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants, but everyone seems happy with my work so I guess I'm not screwing up too much.

Previously I did a handful of "warm body" volunteer jobs where I just had to show up on schedule and follow instructions. Fixing kids' bikes was the most fun, but serving the poor was the most rewarding. The best volunteer role was delivering and serving dinners at a tent city hosted by a local church. We would join them for the meal and talk around the table. That was eye-opening. I went away with a lot more compassion for the homeless, and a lot more disdain for all the little ways my country makes their lives unnecessarily hard.

I contribute financially, but I don't volunteer.

I'll be honest, I have my hands full enough as it is with my career.

I do outreach stuff sometimes through my mother's social work company randomly. Thats usually a few times a year and consists of handing out state/fed benefits type literature to people outside grocery stores. I usually spend a day or two a month at a dog shelter I really like too, two of my dogs have come from there and I just really believe in the way they operate.

I volunteer at parkrun and have done so for about 10 years now!

Yeah, mostly K-12 STEM stuff. The girl scout council in my area knows me through various volunteering events and call me up a few times a year to help with something. Also a middle school that I helped develop a "music in science" couple day-long summer camp curriculum. I have a decent sized set of work colleagues I'll draft for help too.

I don't think I have the skills for door knocking or asking people to sign petitions. Or the right perspective. Like, I'd sign a petition to defund ICE right now, but fuck anyone I would have to argue with to get them to sign it. And I don't like either major party here (US) so not even for the bad-but-not-tyrannical one would I do work phones or doors for.

I volunteer as a receptionist at a free-entry-but-donations-funded art gallery. Probably the most comfortable volunteer position anyone will ever have, as it's really flexible with my university commitments.

What type of volunteer work do you like to do? Do you like the stuff where you are just a warm body - someone to hold a sign or greet people?

Surprisingly, something I really like about it is seeing all the people there and getting to talk to them, and the work environment is very nice. There are a lot of responsibilities involved too, which is both good and bad, but I like that I get to sit in front of a laptop and check emails when I'm not greeting people or selling stuff.

What about shudders door knocking?

I considered door knocking in the past, thinking I had no choice because the ecosystem of different volunteer roles wasn't that varied. Glad that I didn't, it's definitely shudder inducing. It's also kind of hard to see it as useful. Although, I did almost volunteer to do it for a fledgling political party I used to belong too, and I would've followed through on that.

I love doorknocking