What Does Volunteering Mean?
Volunteering should involve you giving up your own time to help people and a community without getting paid or any personal development.
The main goal of volunteering is to give back to help people, the community or society. Before committing to any volunteering role, make sure you understand the criteria and have also cleared it with your DofE leader first.
Your DofE volunteering section should involve….
- giving time to do something useful without getting paid (apart from expenses)
- working with a charity, not for profit or community interest company (giving your time for a commercial company won’t count)
- can involve working individually or in a team
The amount of time you need to commit for your volunteering section is:
- Bronze Award: approximately 2 hours a week for 3 months.
Ideas For Your Volunteering?
There are lots of different opportunities out there for getting some volunteering experience for your DofE award. There are also different ways you might be able to find out about the opportunities.
- Are you already a member of an interest group or activity group that you could help out. For example, are you a member of a sports club or team where you could volunteer to help with some younger members
- Asking your immediate family and friends if they have any ideas or contacts in their networks
- Desk research on the internet
- People that have already done Bronze, maybe members of your Scouting Group, that you could ask where they volunteered
Types of volunteering opportunities might include:
- volunteering with children – if you are in Scouts young leaders is a good option, tutoring
- volunteering with elderly people – find your local old people’s home and ask if you could volunteer, there are also charities which help older people
- volunteering with disabled people – there are charities which aid disabled people who will always appreciate more help
- volunteer with a charity
- volunteer outside – help animals
Recording and Validating Your Volunteering?
It is recommended that you make sure that after each volunteering session, you capture your time and activities. Try not to leave it until the end of your period of volunteering as you will find it much harder to try to remember exactly what you did and when you did it.
For more information
If you have specific questions about volunteering, check out the FAQ page on the DofE website.