Where to Look for it

Locally, there are several options:

• The local council, who usually 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 council and/or 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
do-it.org.uk - www.do-it.org.uk
Community Channel - www.communitychannel.org
TimeBank - www.timebank.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 UK 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, one that we feel we will really enjoy, but this Guide will hopefully make the search easier.

Go to the links in the box to get further information on voluntary work in retirement.

Visit our Pre-retirement Courses section here on laterlife or our dedicated Retirement Courses site