Introduction to Doing volunteering 'well'
Table of contents
Key messages about volunteering
- At least 50% of organisations working alongside migrants in the UK are dependent on volunteers, according to Migration Exchange. How volunteering is done and experienced varies significantly.
- People seeking asylum, people with recent refugee status, and those who are marginalised, often have significant pressures on their resources including time, money and energy. It’s important anyone who signs up to a pre-planned volunteer activity does so on the basis of informed consent.
- People accessing support from ‘volunteers’ are often in complex, precarious and stressful situations. It is important that the conditions are in place to ensure that volunteers support people ‘well’; effectively, sustainably, and with physical, psychological, and legal safety for all involved.
- Volunteering is often seen as a critical way for people without citizenship rights to contribute to and connect with others, to improve health, participate politically, enable self-development, and improve access to economic opportunities and human rights. There is, however, little evidence about who can achieve these outcomes, and under what conditions.
- ‘Volunteering sector’ organisations and bodies want and need to extend and diversify their teams, projects and impacts, but lack guidance on how to do this ‘well’.
- Informal volunteers and community leaders can be simultaneously relied upon and criticized when crisis situations arise, and often excluded from influence, funding and coordination networks in less challenging times.