All the charities you can volunteer for over lockdown 2.0

Volunteering is one of the few things we can still do in lockdown — and doing good feels good too. Katie Strick has a guide to the fantastic charities you can help now
Foodcycle
Foodcycle
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Need a November hobby? Put away the baking trays. The secret to boosting the collective mood through lockdown 2.0 is keeping the community spirit of lockdown 1.0 alive. 

We might not be clapping for the NHS or running for heroes (yet), but that’s no reason not to rally together — even if it’s two metres apart. In fact, helping your neighbour who lives alone or volunteering at a soup kitchen is more important than ever as we head into colder days and darker evenings.  

It might just help you too: not only can supporting others put personal problems in context, but it can have real physiological effects, says Cheryl Isaacs, a psychologist at OPM Consulting in Wandsworth. “When we’re in that compassionate and caring state we tend to release more oxytocin or the ‘love drug’ — that tends to bond us to people,” she explains. “The release of that oxytocin adds to that feel-good factor — it’s a very real thing that happens in our brains.”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge assists the Felix Project
Lucy Young

Spreading the feel-good factor is timely. This year, the Royal Voluntary Service is behind Oxford Street’s dazzling Christmas light display (buy a £22.50 “Love for the 2020 Heroes” T-shirt to donate) and the winners of the Mayor’s office’s Volunteering Awards will be announced next month. Londoners were asked to nominate people they thought had been community heroes during the pandemic.

From shopping for the elderly to reading to children who don’t have books at home, here’s how to join the heroes of London lockdown 2.0.  

Phone a friend

“We clicked straight away over a love of old films,” says Stephanie Ware, a self-employed performer from Stoke Newington who met her “phone buddy” Lilian during the first lockdown in spring. They were matched via the onHand app, which pairs volunteers with older adults to help out and chat, and they’ve become close friends during their weekly calls, with Ware, 41, helping Lilian to set up Zoom and use a dictation app to write a memoir (beonhand.co.uk). 

“She says I’m an angel and have been brought into her life for a reason,” says Ware, but the benefits have been far from one-sided. Ware says it’s taught her to be a better listener and filled the hole that was left by losing her grandparents by the age of 14. “We laugh a lot. I cannot wait to meet her in person.”

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Age UK, Independent Age and Re-engage also pair isolated older people with volunteer call companions, while The Crisis Project is looking for volunteers to write letters to elderly people in care homes. 

There are volunteer helplines for younger generations, too. Under-25s counselling service The Mix has several remote volunteering opportunities, while Shout’s free text message line is hiring overnight crisis volunteers who can offer their time after 10pm. Help out from your sofa.

Food for thought

Hunger is a key concern in the run up to Christmas and this year more than most. Food bank network Trussell Trust has more than 62 food banks across London, with volunteer opportunities from a few hours a month to a few days a week, while community food provider Foodcycle is on the lookout for collection, cooking and hosting volunteers to join its team serving 1,500 people a week across its 11 London hubs. 

If you’d rather stay at home, you can volunteer to its “check-in and chat” service, which involves making weekly calls to some of the recipients it feeds.

Food charity Compliments of the House is recruiting, from delivery assistants to helpline volunteers, and voluntary organisation Order of Malta will be continuing to run its soup kitchens in Marylebone, St James’s, Wandsworth and Westminster, with helpers needed to cook, clean, serve meals, and provide company for the homeless (email london.companionsofmalta@gmail.com). 

Other ways to help the homeless include donating a coat to Hands On London’s annual coat collection campaign, Wrap Up London. It runs until this Saturday and the charity is looking for volunteers to receive coats, sort them and help with distribution to homeless, elderly and refugee charities.  

Mentor and motivate

More than 380,000 children have been stuck in lockdown without a single book. Reading charity Bookmark lets volunteers book flexible 30-minute virtual reading sessions with children under eight to help them to succeed in school, while The Access Project works with GCSE and A-level students from disadvantaged backgrounds across the capital. UK-based graduates and current undergraduates can apply to volunteer as a tutor online.  

If you’re in work, education charity Inspiring The Future — founded by the wife of Nick Clegg, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez — is also taking volunteers, from apprentices all the way up to chief executives. Use the site’s online matchmaking service to find opportunities, from spending an hour a year sharing your career journey with young people at state schools, to becoming a school governor. 

To help refugees get into work, employment charity Breaking Barriers is hiring for volunteers to offer advice and guidance, operational duties and English language skills.

Time fur others

Sales of puppies and kittens soared during the first lockdown but many are already being abandoned. Blue Cross is currently in urgent need of volunteer cat fosterers for pets that have been abandoned or given up. You’ll need experience caring for cats, a spare room, no other pets and need to live within 45 minutes of the charity’s animal hospital in Victoria.  

If you don’t have the resources to take in a pet, consider reaching out to animal organisations whose animals might be missing human company during the pandemic (the Sumida aquarium in Tokyo has been urging members of the public to video-chat their resident eels). 

London Wildlife Trust is calling on helpers to join its army of 1,500 volunteers working on outdoor projects across the capital.

Hands on at home

If you’re shielding or want to help those who are, volunteer remotely. The United Nations Online Volunteering Service is in need of helpers with skills in research, design, fundraising, technology and translation for its projects around the world, while Glimpse — a collective of creatives using their skills for good — are looking for copywriters, strategists, social media experts and fundraising folk. 

The Felix Project: How to volunteer

The Evening Standard’s campaign partner, The Felix Project, has served more than 13.5 million lockdown meals since the start of the pandemic with the support of the paper’s Food for London Now campaign. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Olivia Colman and Jack Whitehall are among its army of 1,135 volunteers who have helped to deliver meals over the past year. 

The surplus food charity is currently looking for helpers to sort and pack in its warehouses and deliver meals by foot, bike and van. To sign up, register online at thefelixproject.org. After your induction, you can book onto your first shift and do as much or as little as you like. Social distancing measures are in place across all roles.  

Lucy Young

Looking for more? You can discover more volunteering opportunities using these resources:

  • Do-it have an extensive list of opportunities, with a ‘Do-it from home’ filter in their search function here.

  • Help from Home is a great resource for ‘microvolunteering’ opportunities where you can take on ad hoc actions as and when, from your home, with absolutely no commitment. Check it out here.

  • Escape the City’s newsletter is fun, user-friendly and centres around purpose-driven work. Sign up here and include ‘volunteering opportunities’ and ‘remote’ in your filters.

  • Helpforce Assist are connecting the needs of hospital and social care teams with pro bono help from businesses.  NHS hospitals and local authorities are looking for comms, marketing, HR and IT assistance for example. Check out how you can help here . 

  • If you have three or more years of experience, the opportunities on Reach Volunteering’s database may be a good fit for you. Check out their opportunities here (there’s a filter for remote work), and a specific list of COVID-19 volunteering opportunities here.

  • Business Response COVID collate requests from organisations that need your, or your business’s, support. Take a look at the requests here and look out for opportunity type: Volunteers (virtual).

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