Human Rights Volunteer Roles

Care4Calais is a volunteer run charity delivering essential aid and support to refugees living in France and the UK. We believe in a fair and tolerant British society and advocate for a welcoming and inclusive attitude towards refugees.

In northern France we operate year-round from Calais, providing warm clothing, bedding, food and assistance to refugees who live in appalling and dangerous conditions.
Across the UK we collect and distribute clothes, shoes, mobile phones and other essential items, as well as social support and interaction, including language lessons, sport and music workshops.  We also help with vital access to legal, medical and educational services.

Due to rapid growth of our UK operations, we are currently looking for volunteers who will help us drive froward UK operations to achieve maximum impact and effectiveness.

Profile:

Strong interest in refugee and asylum work.

Hands on, operational, dynamic and enthusiastic

Team worker with good communication and people skills

Pragmatic with a strong willingness and drive to find solutions and to get things done

Capacity to inspire and sustain volunteer engagement

Organizational skills

Note: Appropriate training and support will be provided. 

As a Regional Lead, you will act as a point of contact between volunteers and the Care4Calais UK Operations team. Working mainly via Facebook/Whatsapp groups, Google Drive, and Zoom, your primary function is to motivate, inspire and support volunteers to take actions. These actions include distributions of essential aid to asylum seekers, joining in and organising social activities, and befriending and supporting asylum seekers to access key services. You will be available to answer questions and provide support to volunteers, and to drive the group forward to achieve maximum impact and effectiveness.

In addition, you will represent Care4Calais in your region and support the team to identify and develop local partnerships. You will acquire an in-depth understanding of Care4Calais policies and procedures and ensure they are adhered to for all local operations. You will also be responsible for keeping the UK operations team informed of activities in your area, as well as feeding back to your group any UK-wide information and updates, promoting strong communication, best practice sharing and rapid action.

Our guidance for groups document sets out the key objectives for UK regional groups, explaining the optimum way we should be working together as an organisation to achieve our goals in an organised and effective manner. This guidance was developed based on the experience of our teams on the ground and reflects current best practice. As a regional lead, you should familiarise yourself with this guidance and look to ensure that your group is operating according to its content.

Tasks:

Set-up:

• Request access to the ‘Care4Calais volunteer chat group’ and your regional group on Facebook.

• Ask admin to add you to the main whatsapp groups – Regional Lead Support group (optional) and the UK Hotels group. The former is for issues specific to regional leads and is for support, and the latter for all UK hotel leads.

• We highly recommend using a separate phone and sim card for Care4Calais; this allows you to switch off when you need to. You may also want to set up a specific Care4Calais Facebook account.

• Events, such as upcoming distributions or drop-ins, to keep everyone in the loop and encourage new volunteers to join in.

• Important updates that may affect the group, such as changes in government legislation, or new services that Care4Calais UK are offering.

• Posts to congratulate everyone on their hard work and keep them motivated!

• You should also keep an eye on the ‘Care4Calais volunteer chat group’. Sometimes people may post requests relevant to your area. We also receive requests from areas that don’t have a dedicated C4C group, but there may be an individual volunteer in that area - you can post in the volunteer group in case they can help.

Emails:

• Emails come through from various sources – via the Annie inbox (monitored by admin), from other charities or from other places. 

• Emails are often requests for items for individuals in the area. If your group maintains a spreadsheet of requests, add these requests to the spreadsheet, place a post on Facebook (see above) or get in contact with a volunteer if you know someone in their specific area.

• If you are sent an email from the Annie inbox, don’t reply to the Annie email – reply to the email address that sent the original email to the Annie inbox.

• Keep on top of emails daily if possible.

Meetings:

• Host a meeting with the group

• Make sure this is advertised well in advance to increase the amount of people who attend. 

• Write an agenda beforehand to ensure you remember to cover everything in the meeting.

• Ask someone to take minutes and post them on the facebook group after the meeting.

General volunteer support:

Another aspect of the regional lead role is ensuring volunteers feel well supported and can reach out to you if they ever need. If you think a volunteer is struggling or doesn’t feel integrated in the group, reach out to them. You need to be there for volunteers when they have questions and just be a friendly supportive face. If you feel a volunteer is dealing with some very sensitive cases that may call for extra support, RLs can, at their discretion, offer volunteers the opportunity to speak to an MSF counsellor. 

Remember that the C4C UK Operations Team and Field Operations Coordinators are always here to help, just pop them a message if you have any questions and feel free to reach out to them for support!

Care4Calais is dedicated to cultivating a diverse and inclusive work environment and
recognises that this is invaluable to our ability to serve the communities we support.

We therefore welcome and encourage applications from diverse backgrounds including
from Black, Asian and Minority-Ethnic communities, people from refugee and migrant
backgrounds, and people with lived experience of the UK immigration system. If you have
any questions about this or need additional support with the application process for any reason, please let us know.

About Circles South East

Circles South East, based in Oxfordshire, is an award-winning charity which works to reduce the impact and instances of sexual harm through prevention, rehabilitation, education and safeguarding.

We have a long record of working within the field of reducing impact of sexual harm. We work with Survivors and others impacted by sexual violence to help them heal and perpetrators to help them to avoid re-offending. 

We are organisational members of the BACP, and take referrals from organisations such as Victim Support, Children’s and Social Services, Rape Crisis, Probation Victim Liaison Units, GP Surgeries etc as well as from potential clients themselves.

Volunteers are at the core of what we do, and operate across all aspects of our work.

What will you be doing?

Trustees ensure their charity has a clear strategy and that all decisions put the needs of the service users first. They safeguard the charity’s assets – both physical assets, including property, and intangible ones, such as its reputation. They make sure these are used well and that the charity is run sustainably. They hold the CEO to account and provide support and encouragement to them and the team. Trustees are jointly responsible for all their decisions and work together to ensure the charity delivers it’s aims.

A full list of duties can be found in the candidate pack attached.

This role is mainly home-based.

What are we looking for?

We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested from hearing from people with the following skills/experience:

· Legal

· Business

· Marketing & Branding

· London communities. We work in a lot of London communities and have no one on our board with knowledge of this part of the UK

We would especially welcome applicants who are from Black, Asian or other minoritised ethnic groups, people with a disability, and young people under the age of 35’ who are all under-represented on our board. We strongly value the contribution that people with these characteristics would bring to our board discussions.

What difference will you make?

We are looking for a Trustees to contribute to our plans for an exciting future. While continuing to provide Circles across the South East we aim to further develop our complementary services of counselling, victim support and training. We are constantly innovating new methods to deliver our goals and currently have two funded pilot projects which we hope to further develop. We have recently secured sustainable funding for our core Circles work providing trustees with a fabulous opportunity to be part of the charity as we build on this.

Commitment:

Estimate of time needed: up to five hours per month.

The board normally meets 5 times a year. The board meetings are quarterly and usually take place 4-6pm on a weekday. We are currently meeting remotely.

At Happy Baby Community, we provide safe and resilient communities for pregnant women and women with young children who have fled war, violence and traffickers and are seeking asylum in the UK. We want to make sure we protect and empower each other, through shared knowledge and understanding. We meet to learn from one another and to feel strong and supported - able to work, study, volunteer, and help others in need.

We are looking for online English teachers to join our vibrant team! 

HBC offers online English classes using Zoom on Wednesdays and Fridays 10am-1pm UK time. Classes run for about 45 minutes, offering L0- literacy, L1-Beginner, L2- Elementary and L3- Intermediate. We also do some one-one literacy tutoring. The classes start on the hour. Some of our teachers teach multiple classes and some only teach one depending on their availability. As an online English teacher, your responsibilities will include preparing and delivering lessons to improve students' reading, writing, and speaking skills.

We are looking for female volunteers with the following desired criteria:

• Experience teaching ESOL
• Teaching qualification
• Familiarity/experience with Zoom
• Passion to teach
• Weekday availability

What do we offer our volunteers?

• A vibrant working culture
• Strong connections and support system
• Valuable work experience with a diverse and vulnerable community of learners
• A professional reference after 6 months
• Ongoing training and development opportunities

Thank you for your interest. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Welfare volunteers with experience in social work required to help asylum seekers access basic rights and support 

WOMEN only need apply as we work with women who have escaped violence and trafficking by men.

We are seeking an enthusiastic volunteer to assist our Client Service Administrator on Reception in hosting our busy reception area and friendly waiting room. In this role, you will use your excellent interpersonal skills to welcome clients and visiting professionals and other volunteers to the Helen Bamber Foundation, making them feel comfortable, attending to any immediate needs they may have, assisting them with their queries and notifying clinicians and other staff of their arrival.

You will be at the heart of an exciting, team of experts working as a representative of the Helen Bamber Foundation and the first point of contact for our diverse range of clients and visitors.  You will be a self-motivating team player, organised, efficient and have a compassionate mind-set. 

Main tasks and activities:

· Greeting clients and ensuring that clients are having their immediate needs met;

· Ensuring the reception is well-presented;

· Answering the phone and responding to a wide range of enquiries;

· Maintaining the shared Outlook calendar and co-ordinating room allocations;

· Booking interpreters;

· Ensuring the smooth running of the day-to-day activities;

· General office administration including: ordering of office supplies, entering data, filing and organising office supplies storage etc;

· Reception cover when needed.