I Want to Work in ..... Voluntary Work
Through volunteering, you can enhance your CV, develop new skills, and make new friends.
According to a Time Bank/Reed survey of 200 of UK leading businesses:
- 73 per cent of employers would employ a candidate with volunteer experience over one without
- 94 per cent believe that volunteering adds to skills
- 58 per cent say that voluntary work experience can often be more valuable than experience gained in paid employment.
A Student Volunteering Survey found that students gained the following from volunteering
- Satisfaction, sense of reward, achievement and fulfillment
- Sense of making a difference and helping people.
- Greater self-confidence
- Improved self discipline and motivation
- Chance to try new things and to develop and learn new skills
- Improved communication, interpersonal, team working skills and ability to work independently
- Meeting new people from different backgrounds and making new friends
- Being part of the local community
- Enhanced CV.
- Insight into different working environments,
- Using volunteering experience in job applications and interviews
- Feeling that there are positive things to look forward to in life
Here are some quotes from the survey 
- "Made me confident and has made me realise the difference I can make."
- "The feeling that you are making a real life difference in the lives of young people and the local community."
- "I now have new career aspirations and the confidence to take forward these new ideas."
- "Feeling of accomplishment afterwards."
- "Meeting new people, doing something that is fun and meaningful."
- "Made me more aware of the difficulties other people go through and made me appreciate the simple things in life."
- "Pleasure, satisfaction and the feeling that I can help somebody."
- "It’s made me a happier person."
Volunteering is an excellent way of gaining career-related experience. Organisations offer opportunities to work with disadvantaged or disabled people, children or the elderly, in the UK and abroad. Charities use volunteers in office administration, fundraising, public relations and research: good experience for careers with these organisations or elsewhere in the public sector or business.
There are about 22 million volunteers in the UK. Voluntary work will improve your skills, boost your confidence, help you make new friends and give you a lift knowing that you are helping others worse off then yourself. Helping others is a good way to help yourself. Research showed that volunteering for a good cause can increase our happiness as much as if we doubled our income. The more voluntary work volunteers did the happier they got and they were also less prone to depression and physically healthier.
Voluntary work is not just available in the "voluntary sector". If you hope to work in the media, work placements with commercial employers such as local newspapers and radio stations are usually unpaid, but are an excellent way of building up skills and experience that will give you a head start in this fiercely competitive business.
A survey by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations found that working as a volunteer was second only to dance as the biggest source of enjoyment. "Experience in a charity shop is absolutely considered valuable experience and this would be taken into account."Graduate Retail Recruiters Forum |
The same principle applies to advertising, publishing, political research, etc.: use professional directories such as the Hollis Press and PR Yearbook for contact addresses.
- Do-It www.do-it.org.uk search volunteer opportunities by geographical location in the UK: just type in your postcode to find lots of volunteering opportunities within 5 km of where you live. Also information on gap year opportunities overseas.
- Kent Union Volunteering www.kentunionvolunteering.co.uk Browse through placements, find the relevant contact details and log your hours for the Kent Student Certificate for Volunteering here.
www.kentunion.co.uk/volunteering Information on Kent Union’s Volunteering Awards, updates on volunteering and new placements. The Kent University Volunteering and Skills Development Co-ordinator is available to talk to students at Medway (G0-05 Gillingham Building) and David Bolsover at Canterbury in Student Activities.
Medway Volunteering Facebook page www.facebook.com/medwayvolunteering - Rotaract has a new club in Canterbury. It's for people from eighteen to thirty who wish to help the community. Email info@canterburyrotaract.org
- Kent Libraries runs a volunteering scheme
- Kent Wildlife Trust www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk Needs volunteers to help on various wildlife reserves in Kent.
contact Sue Morris, Volunteer Development Officer 01622 662012 sue.morris@kentwildlife.org Can also arrange employee volunteering days where company employees work on a reserve for staff team building and personal development. - Volunteering England www.volunteering.org.uk/IWantToVolunteer find your local volunteer bureau and give them a ring!
One student who was a keen singer wanted to do something to improve her CV. She got the idea of setting up a group to sing songs from fifty years ago at local homes for the elderly, with a few modern songs thrown in for variety.
She visited university music societies to recruit musicians, and soon had over 40 people: enough to form two groups! She then made several bookings for concerts.
She arranged rehearsals, made copies of music and they were soon doing their first concerts. The standard wasn't very high but they more than made up for this with enthusiasm! As the pensioners knew the songs, they were soon joining in. Even non-musicians started coming along to sit and chat with the pensioners.
The word spread round other homes in the area and they became swamped with requests for concerts. When the student applied for jobs, this became a talking point at interview and she received 3 offers of places on graduate training schemes.
- Community Service Volunteers www.csv.org.uk places over 100,000 volunteers every year: no-one is rejected. CSV's full time volunteering programme offers hundreds of volunteering placements for people wishing to gain experience in social or health care fields, education and youth justice or those looking for a challenging year out after school or university.
Placements are full-time, available for between 4-12 months. You receive free accommodation and subsistence which includes £35 per week towards day to day expenses plus food (or up to £40 per week to buy food) along with relevant training and support.
You could be placed anywhere in the UK so you need to be willing to relocate but travel expenses to and from your placement are provided.
Placements are diverse: supporting adults or children with physical disabilities, learning disabilities or mental health issues, mentoring young people or helping people who are homeless. Particularly useful for those interested in gaining experience for a career in social work, health care, youth work, childcare, the probation service, teaching, physiotherapy & occupational therapy, counselling and advocacy. Open to UK or EEA nationals aged between 16-35 and living in the UK. - Cross-Cultural Solutions www.crossculturalsolutions.org international volunteering non-profit organisation. Volunteers work side-by-side with local people. Placements include orphanages and childcare centres, schools, health clinics and hospitals, homes for the elderly & centres for people with disabilities. Start dates are year-round and programmes from 1-12 weeks in Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Morocco, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Thailand.
- The Support4Learning website www.support4learning.org.uk/jobsearch/index.cfm has links to a wide range of organisations with opportunities for volunteers, in the UK and abroad.
- Timebank www.timebank.org.uk opportunities in the UK and a searchable database of overseas voluntary organisations.
- Idealist www.idealist.org over 56,000 not-for-profit and community organisations in 165 countries, which you can search or browse by name, location, or mission for volunteer opportunities, jobs and internships.
- Voluntary Sector Jobs www.voluntarysectorjobs.co.uk list all types of Charity jobs, Housing jobs, Jobs in NGOs, the Arts etc.
- Volunteering Options www.volunteeringoptions.org Volunteering site from Ireland that lists volunteer opportunities worldwide and has developed a code of practice for volunteering organisations
- Elevation Networks www.elevationnetworks.org Activities include networking events, mentoring, internships, skills development and volunteer opportunities for students and graduates in particular, but not exclusively, for people from minority ethnic backgrounds, women, and those affected by disability, poverty or social and economic circumstance.
- Forum 3 www.forum3.co.uk annual recruitment event for the not-for-profit sector
- Society Guardian – articles and jobs http://society.guardian.co.uk/voluntary
- See also Prospects Web Voluntary Work www.prospects.ac.uk/links/VolWork
Other Relevant Web Pages
- Work Abroadwww.kent.ac.uk/careers/sitesint.htm see the Voluntary Work tab
- Alternatives www.kent.ac.uk/careers/alternatives.htm has a section on Gap Years
- Work Experience and Vacation Work www.kent.ac.uk/careers/vacwork.htm
- Charities www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/charity.htm lists charities offering volunteer internships and a list of international volunteer internships.
- Environment www.kent.ac.uk/careers/Environment.htm the Employers and Links tab gives a range of environmental organisations offering voluntary work in the UK and abroad
- Heritage www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/HeritageVolunteering.htm
- Crime-related www.kent.ac.uk/careers/criminology.htm
"If you want to feel good, do good! An effective cure for unhappiness is to help others." - Police www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/Police.htm#POLICE details volunteering opportunities with Kent Police
- Law-related www.kent.ac.uk/careers/siteslaw.htm#pubbods
- International Development Organisations comprehensive listing of many organisations offering voluntary work.
Last fully updated 2010