For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been on the lookout for volunteering opportunities. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t have many friends and spent most of my days bored out of my mind, but staying idle felt terrible. So, over the years, I’ve acquired quite an experience in all sorts of volunteering and contributing. And because I’m a hopeless introvert and don’t have too much money to waste, for most of these, all you need is internet access and two brain cells to rub together.
How and where to volunteer online
Here’s a list of some projects that I’ve personally contributed to:
- Translate subtitles for TED. I remember translating subtitles from a TED talk by this amazing woman who swam across the sea to set some kind of record and ended up being stung by a box jellyfish. Imagine my surprise years later when I was watching the movie Nyad on Netflix and recognised the story that I was already familiar with from my volunteering days.
- Contribute to Wikipedia. I’ve been a Wikipedia contributor since 2013, but have only recently reached my one hundredth edit. This may not be too impressive, but I’m proud of this small accomplishment and intend to continue this endeavour. I consider this my contribution to my country and its culture. If you’re a native English speaker, this probably doesn’t mean much to you; however, outside of the anglosphere, contributing to the online presence of your culture, especially language, is important.
- Create audiobooks for Librivox. This is a really cool volunteer project that mainly focuses on public domain books. I only did a few pieces from Ukrainian literature, but I’d like to continue contributing. It’s great for when you want to learn a new foreign language but struggle to find good resources.
- Start a blog – fill the world with your bright ideas! This is a well-known pain point for my local community. Ever since I’ve been on the internet, it’s always “support Ukrainian” and “create Ukrainian content”. In reality, this issue is a lot more complicated for a plethora of reasons. I personally ditched my Ukrainian blog years ago and switched to English. Still, I can write about things I know and share more of my culture. If you’re an expert in any topic at all, you need a blog! That’s my opinion that I firmly stand behind for as long as I can remember.
- Help a non-profit organisation – you can help them out with their website or social media presence. For some time, I’ve been helping out a local charity for children with cancer. Initially, I joined them to help maintain their website, but they had all sorts of issues with it, so I would just make personalised visual assets to use in promotional campaigns and stuff like that. I just had this random idea to use the logo of the charity and make a nice, colourful frame for the pictures. Looking back at it, it added a nice touch to their communication and made their posts more recognisable, so I’m quite proud of what I’ve done, even if I didn’t stay with the organisation for too long and couldn’t do much more for them.
These are some things that I’ve contributed to personally and can recommend. Of course, you could do so much more, like translate subtitles for YouTube videos that you find important to share with the public. Adding pictures of your local area to Wikimedia Commons is also a big project that needs to be done, but it may not be accessible to anyone.
Why do it at all?
There are many reasons why you might want to volunteer.
- add it to your resume – especially if it’s relevant to your career!
- improve a skill – writing, photo editing, basic coding are all examples of skills you can gain from volunteering,
- because it’s the right thing to do,
- just for fun.
Do you volunteer? How do you like to volunteer for your community? Share in the comments!
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