I Wonder If There Are Any Places I Could Volunteer?
We recently got this email to our inbox here at VolunteerConnector . . .
“Hello, I hope you are well
My name is Tamara and I am a 13-year-old girl. I was wondering if there were any places I could volunteer at my age. I know that not many facilities let younger kids volunteer but if there were any that could work please let me know.
If not would there possibly be anything/projects I could do to help out? Such as making or baking something or anything that could be used to help others.
Thank you”
We thought it might be helpful to remind people we are always available if you need a little extra support in finding volunteer roles that are a good fit for you. There are humans who care a lot about community behind VolunteerConnector and there are also 150+ Volunteer Centres across the country so no matter where you are reading this from there is probably one close to you!
We should also share how we responded to Tamara in case you are like her and looking for a way to help in your community and not exactly sure what that could look like . . .
Hi Tamara,
Thank you so much for your email! Very cool that you are looking for ways to get involved in your community. There are certainly some organizations that have age requirements for volunteers but there are many others that don’t. I have some more questions for you to help clarify what might be a good fit; do you want to volunteer in person or online? How much time do you have available to commit (do you want to volunteer once? Or have a monthly/weekly time?) Are there certain things that are interesting to you…you mentioned baking is there anything else? Is it important that you volunteer close to home or are you ok with going to a different area?
Sometimes volunteerism does not have to be with an established organization it can also be doing awesome things in your community like adding food to Community Pantry, shovelling a neighbour’s sidewalk, bringing muffins to someone, chalking the sidewalk with positive messages…
Let me know your thoughts and I can send you some specific opportunities!
VolunteerConnector Team
There were a couple more emails back and forth, but we eventually used the ‘proximity’ and ‘youth’ filters on VolunteerConnector to find some opportunities that met her criteria and ta-da another human finding belonging in community!