Video Content Editor Volunteer Roles

Noms makes daily cooking easy. They solve the question “What’s for dinner?” by automatically converting online cooking content into intuitive, easy-to-follow and step-by-step recipes. With the app, individuals can search for recipes by what’s in their fridge, customise recipes to suit their needs, swap ingredients that they do not like or have, and display quantities in intuitive measurements (handfuls, spoons, etc.). Individuals. Individuals can then cook these recipes with their  easy-to-follow format that shows only essential information (no ads, long descriptions, or touching the phone). And, they can optimise their  groceries to make more food with less money and zero waste. 

RECIPE EDITOR

• The responsibilities for this role may change all the time but tasks you may be doing are: uploading recipe videos to our app, using our unique editor to turn cooking reels into step-by-step recipes and checking a creator's original recipes and editing the step-by-step recipe to be easy-to-use and accurate.
• Volunteer 7-9 hours per week remotely for 1-2 months.

Web Editor Volunteer Role Description

Are you passionate about changing the way we treat animals? Do you want to help reduce damage to our environment? Do you want to get people to enjoy healthy vegan food that looks good and tastes great? 

The Vegan Society makes veganism more accessible and an easily adopted approach by supporting individuals, policy and decision makers, caterers, manufacturers, health care professionals and the media. 

Why do we need you? 

Our website covers a huge range of topics, aimed to support people in becoming, and staying, vegan. Keeping all of these up to date takes a lot of hours and many hands, especially when it comes to pages that need regular updates involving sourcing and editing images, improving accessibility, and updating content.

What does the role involve? 

The role will involve a variety of different tasks in updating the website such as: 

• Assisting the web team with content migration for the society’s new website.
• Adding and updating the events page, which will include editing images and proofreading content for the page. 
• Reviewing and fixing pages with broken links. 
• Publishing and updating recipes on our recipes page. 
• Supporting with accessibility improvements to the site such as adding alt tags to images. 
• Undertaking search engine optimisation tasks, such as identifying key search terms and popular pages we could develop. 
• More advanced web editing and development tasks may be offered to volunteers depending on their skillset and level of experience. 

We expect that tasks will be assigned based on your experience and confidence in the area, with full support from the Web Officer. This would all happen in software we provide. Our website CMS currently is Drupal; however, we will be moving over to Umbraco soon, so you would become familiar with this.

What training and development is available? 

Each task will be introduced in a phased way, with a full induction and training session on each area. We will provide training for specific areas, based on your existing experience. There are opportunities for all our roles to develop and to take on more responsibility.

What skills would be useful in doing this role? 

• Familiarity with content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal or Umbraco would be an ideal foundation for this role. 
• Experience with web editing. 
• Ability to use digital systems and processes. 
• Knowledge and experience of image editing to specific dimensions. 
• Ability to work independently. 
• Willingness to learn and develop in the role. 

 What does my availability have to be? 

This role will require four to six hours a week. For the first month of volunteering, you will need to commit to these hours between 9:am-5:pm (GMT) so that staff support is directly available to you. After this we will have a review and, if you are comfortable, your hours can be completed more flexibly around your schedule. To keep up contact with staff and help you to manage your tasks, we will schedule a weekly check-in video call with you during weeks that you are volunteering for us. 

 Who can I contact to find out more? 

You can contact Kaya (Senior Volunteering and Engagement Officer) and Emma (Web Officer).

Do you want to gain professional writing skills and have your named work viewed by thousands? Do you have a passion for great literature or fine art or classical or contemporary music or history or archaeology or something else in the humanities? Do you love to learn about other cultures, their cuisine, customs and language? Do you want to join a vibrant community of writers? Then write for us!

The Cultural Me helps our subscribers learn about the arts and culture the same way they would learn a new language. We are a tech company and are developing artificial intelligence-assisted learning.

We are looking for writers to research and write micro-articles (roughly 300–350 words) on selected subjects, for example, a piece on Tolstoy, or Early Renaissance to Contemporary Art, or Latin American magic realism to Postcolonial Literature, or Sri Lankan culture, or Beethoven, or Film... You will also be involved in editing contributions from other writers.

If you have never written professionally before, then don't worry: all we ask for is a Bachelor’s Degree in the Arts and Humanities. We are also happy to consider you if you have alternative qualifications — provided you can demonstrate specialist subject matter knowledge in one or more areas in the arts and culture (and you love reading). The articles we produce (unlike popular media) are to the best academic standards. The ideal person, therefore, should enjoy writing articles that are well-researched yet written in an accessible format suitable for the public at large.

Here is what you can expect from us in return for your voluntary work:

• Detailed and friendly, one-to-one editorial feedback on almost every line you write.
• How to write for a busy mainstream reader: developing a story.
• A language and style guide reflecting modern trends in mainstream media.
• The chance to develop a deeper understanding of the arts, history, philosophy...
• Publication of your work to a global audience on a fast-growing platform.
• A link to your writing portfolio to include in your CV.
• A chance to join our diverse community of writers in our active chat space with the option to contribute to our growing social feed on the Cultural Me website.

In addition, if you provide The Cultural Me as a reference for a potential job, we will provide a personalised reference based on your portfolio. Our writers have secured jobs with organisations such as the Red Cross, Kobalt Music, Oxford University Museums, amongst others.

This is a brilliant opportunity for someone with a passion for the arts and culture to join a community on a worthy mission. If you love the idea, then please email Emma by clicking on ‘Apply’ and writing a short cover letter explaining what you like about the role.

COMMENTS FROM OUR WRITERS

Claire Woods — MA Creative Writing, Open University

‘The editors have a keen eye for detail, and I’m learning so much already!’

Florence Gildea — MPhil Sociology, University of Cambridge

‘The level of support, the attention to detail and the encouragement I experienced while writing for The Cultural Me was absolutely unprecedented in all my years of writing. Editing is an underappreciated skill these days, as people are keen to publish content as quickly as possible. It is a testament to the commitment of the Editors at The Cultural Me for producing resources of the highest quality that they put so much time and effort into working with writers like me. I felt both stretched and valued.’

Zoe Willis — BA French and German, University of Bristol

‘Working on The Cultural Me micro-articles really made me interrogate what I was writing, making sure the subject was absolutely clear for those reading it. At university, you are never told to examine each sentence as to how it fits in with your argument.’

Elise Czyzowska — BA English Literature & Language, University of Oxford

‘Writing for The Cultural Me has allowed me to continue practising my analytical reading from university, and given me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the literature I know and love.’

Nicholas Benton — BA English Literature, University of Sheffield

‘The Cultural Me provided me with a detailed commendatory reference that helped me secure a place on a master’s degree at the University of Birmingham.’

Tom Mackinnon — BA History of Art, University of Cambridge

‘Since starting to write for The Cultural Me, I’ve actually learned a lot about writing for mainstream readers. At the same time, I really enjoy being able to keep in touch with the topics I love. I do recommend this experience to anyone wanting to pursue a career in writing, curation or education.’

SAMPLE MICRO-ARTICLES

Please see the attachment.

SAMPLE WRITER PROFILES

Ugne — https://thecultural.me/people/Ugne-Civilyte-109496

Isabella — https://thecultural.me/people/Isabella-Barber-109388

Rami — https://thecultural.me/people/Rami-Barhoumi-109470

Judith — https://thecultural.me/people/Judith-Kuthy-109397

Ashly — https://thecultural.me/people/Ashly-Cork-109382

Christina — https://thecultural.me/people/Christina-Apostolidou-109357

Katerina — https://thecultural.me/people/Katerina-Koukouthaki-109393

Satkartar — https://thecultural.me/people/Satkartar-Chaggar-109383