Although the scope for voluntary work is enormous, finding
exactly the vacancy that suits us is not always easy;
persistence and patience are sometimes required. So where can we go to get help with finding
vacancies in the voluntary sector?
Locally, there are several
options:
- The local council, who will have someone, or even several someones, who liaise with the voluntary sector
- The library
- The local newspaper
- Increasingly, there is a ‘shop’ on the high street that
is funded by the local voluntary organisations and staffed
largely by volunteers that has all the local vacancies.
Sometimes it is more like an office that is sometimes not
quite as prominent in the town but we should be able to find it through the
phone book. Indeed, a search through our local telephone
directory under 'Charities' or 'Voluntary Organisations'
should give us a comprehensive list of those that are in
your area.
If we want to look a bit further afield, there is an
organisation called the
Retired Executives’ Action
Clearing House’ (REACH) that matches people’s
professional skills with voluntary jobs. You fill in an online
registration form showing where you live and what your interests
and skills are. They then send a list of opportunities in
your area and when you select one that you think will suit you
they arrange for the organisation to contact you.
You can have a look at individuals' experiences of working in
the voluntary sector through REACH by looking at Laterlife's
Reports from the REACH files. Read about the kind of
opportunities that people have found.
There are also numerous websites that offer opportunities for
voluntary work. Below are listed just a few of them that you may
find helpful:
 Community Service Volunteers -
www.csv.org.uk
Volunteering England -
www.volunteering.org.uk
Volunteering Scotland -
www.volunteerscotland.org.uk
Volunteering Wales -
www.volunteering-wales.net
Active Communities Directorate -
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/communities/volunteering
do-it.org.uk -
www.do-it.org.uk
Community Channel -
www.communitychannel.org
TimeBank -
www.timebank.org.uk
Business in the Community -
www.bitc.org.uk
The Media Trust -
www.mediatrust.org
The Government website
Direct.gov.co.uk allows you to type in where you live and
then provides a list of vacancies in your area. It's well worth
a look as it is quite comprehensive and includes the full range
of voluntary organisations.
We can, of course, approach organisations directly if we
think that they can provide the kind of voluntary work for which
we're looking. So we can go into your local Age Concern shop,
for example, and get details from there. It's always worth
looking on
their website first to see if they are likely to have
anything of interest to us.
Finally, there is Laterlife's section on
Voluntary Work which provides the names of some other
organisations that we might like to contact.
Working in retirement is very much part of many people's
retirement plan. Voluntary work helps people to feel that they
are giving something back to the community as well as helping
themselves to keep active and mentally alert. We may not be
instantly successful in finding exactly the right opportunity
for us but this Guide will hopefully make your search easier.
Go to the links in the box to get further information on
voluntary work in retirement.
This month why not visit our
New Retirement Courses site
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