Online & Remote Volunteering | Help in Corona Times
Online & Remote Volunteering – a volunteering activity you can do from home – was already popular before Corona times but now it is en vogue like never before 🙂 For all those who need a change of pace at home, Remote Volunteering not only offers a good Netflix alternative, but also a meaningful pastime, a new challenge and possibly a chance to try something new. – Four birds with one stone, what more could you want? In this article we introduce you to projects that you can support from home.
1 | SUPPORT STUDENTS IN VIRTUAL LEARNING
The schools have been closed for weeks. Despite slow reopening for some grades, there are still many children who are struggling alone at home with their homework. In order to prevent the gap between the children who have school support and those who do not receive help from widening, additional support is all the more important.
CORONA SCHOOL
corona-school.de was initiated by students in the context of the Hackathon “‘wirvsvirus” of the German government .
In order to relieve parents and students during the Corona crisis and to provide a safe and reliable learning atmosphere, the Corona School arranges contact between students for virtual learning support.
According to the motto #wissenstattvirenaustauschen (which means something like “Spread knowledge instead of the virus”) you can register as a student on the free platform and support students in their studies!
KINDERHELDEN GGMBH
With a targeted 1:1 support, KinderHelden provides primary school children with difficult starting conditions with a mentor as a learning and leisure companion – a “Kinderheld*in” (which is a “kid hero”), so to say. Since the current situation does not allow the meetings to take place in person, they enable digital encounters with suitable working materials and tips.
Would you like to create closeness despite the physical distance, and thus support a young person? Via vostel.de you can contact the organisation directly and arrange a first (online) meeting.
COMMUNITY ACCOMODATION ALBERT-KUNTZ-STRASSE | MILAA GGMBH
About 150 children and adolescents from 0 to 17 years live in the community accommodation Albert-Kuntz-Straße in Berlin-Hellersdorf. Due to the difficult learning conditions that are currently caused by self-study from home, many questions arise among the children that cannot be answered as easily as usual.
Especially the homework is very difficult for the children and teenagers at the moment. Because the personal contact to their teachers and other classmates is lost and they have to teach themselves everything.
In addition to support with homework, it is important that the young people continue to speak German so that their German language skills do not deteriorate during the many weeks of school closure.
Do you have time and desire to support children and teenagers during this challenging time? Via vostel.de you can contact the organisation directly and arrange a first meeting.
STAYSCHOOL.DE
The platform stayschool.de was created to support students from difficult life situations in their educational path. It provides easy access to social online learning for all participants – regardless of their parents, place of residence or accommodation.
Thanks to the simple, multilingual structure, online tutoring via video chat is easy to implement. Also, the platform can be a good place to learn for everyone involved. With a few clicks directly from the living room, you can add a meaningful activity to your everyday life.
YOOPIES.DE
Also the platform Yoopies is offering online tutoring for children and young people – and thereby addresses children of nursing staff and other systemically relevant workers.
Besides offline volunteering opportunities such as childcare or everyday help for elderly people, you can make a big contribution here by helping children with their homework via video call, whose parents are currently working at full speed and therefore have little timeto care for the learning success of their little ones.
P.S.: If you are one of those who are urgently looking for online tutoring for your child, you can register here as a ‘Seeker’ and easily find helpers who are already registered!
2 | WRITING LETTERS FOR PEOPLE WITH LIMITED CONTACTS
For many people who live in a retirement or nursing home, a visit from family and friends is a highlight of everyday life. However, due to the Corona crisis, relatives and friends are no longer allowed to visit the facilities. As a result, the residents’ everyday life is not only more monotonous, but also more lonely. In order to change this, some partner organisations are looking for volunteers who can draw or do handicrafts, write a poem or a letter to put a smile on the faces of the people in the old people’s or nursing home.
CARE & TRAVEL
Care & Travel is a student initiative that brings young and old together. In a nursing home, young travellers give the residents their time. Therefore they are provided with food and accommodation and can explore a new city at the same time.
Since no visits are possible at the moment, Care & Travel has started a letter campaign to be close to the people in old people’s and nursing homes. If creativity has grabbed you and you have some small works of art or letters to send, send a note to the project responsibles.
BRIEFTAUBEN
Also the initiative Brieftauben started a campaign in which letters from volunteers are addressed to people with limited contacts due to corona.
If you want to write a letter or a postcard to someone, paint a picture or pack a parcel, visit their plattform for more information.
SOZIALVERBAND VDK BERLIN-BRANDENBURG
With the campaign “Pinsel-Post” the Sozialverband Vdk also wants to bring variety, colour and joy into the Corona everyday life of care institutions. With nice letters, poems, painted pictures or handicrafts, the residents should notice that they are not alone.
Everyone can give free rein to their creativity and then send a small work of art to a participating care facility! 🙂
YOUNGCARITAS BERLIN
The youngcaritas Berlin is looking for people with language skills in Arabic, Farsi, Patchu, Russian, Somali, Urdu, Turkish or English who want to be creative. With their campaign “Schreib mal wieder”, they send encouraging letters to a shared accommodation for people with a refugee background. The residents are currently in quarantine and are happy to hear about your personal thoughts, descriptions of everyday life in this special time or nice wishes.
Write a letter to the residents and show them that especially in these days someone is thinking about them!
3 | USE YOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS FOR A GOOD CAUSE
Language opens doors – that is why translations and multilingual projects are of great importance. Especially in the social and cultural sector. If you are able to speak more than one language, here are some projects where you can use your language talent for a good cause.
SPEAK
SPEAK is a social start-up that connects migrants, refugees and locals and organizes language courses and events.
To ensure that language courses can continue to take place, SPEAK now wants to offer the program online and is looking for volunteers to lead a language group for two weeks. Before the language course you will receive training and materials – it does not have to be your native language, but you should be able to speak it fluently. Furthermore, after your language course as a language tutor, you are allowed to learn any other language for free.
If you want to help refugees to learn a new language and are not afraid to lead your own group, contact SPEAK and become a buddy for their online language groups!
SCULPTURE NETWORK E.V.
sculpture network is Europe’s leading platform for three-dimensional art – a non-profit organisation for the active promotion and support of contemporary sculpture.
Volunteers who are native speakers of English can volunteer to translate or proofread articles and other texts. The target group of the texts are artists, art institutions and art enthusiasts throughout Europe. Want to help and learn more about art? Find out more on vostel.de.
VISIONEERS E.V.
VISIONEERS e.V. is an independent association that supports socially disadvantaged and delinquent young people in Berlin and in developing countries.
For their blog, they are looking for volunteer translators to translate an article into Spanish once a month. If you are fluent in Spanish and German, and you are interested in volunteering, they are looking forward to your support!
4 | BECOME A TANDEM PARTNER FOR NEWCOMERS
START WITH A FRIEND
Start with a Friend (SwaF for short) creates encounters between newcomers and locals in order to jointly shape a society in which all people feel comfortable – regardless of their origin.
Even if there are first corona loosenings, the current situation is still unusual. But especially in times of physical isolation we need exchange and encounter. That is why SwaF continues to bring people together: through a digital tandem partnership (eTandem) and through a diverse online program for their community.
So you can continue to meet great people and learn new things. No previous knowledge or training is necessary, you just have to be open with each other. You want to learn more? Then have a look at their website or contact SwaF directly via vostel.de!
5 | TEST THE WEBSITE OF A SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
VOSTEL.DE
And now a bit of publicity for more or less our own cause: many smaller social organisations have to manage their tasks with few resources and do a great job every day. Unfortunately, they often have too little time (and money) to take care of a professional and user-friendly website appearance.
That’s why we from vostel.de have thought of a support format to help organizations to find as many test persons as possible to put their website through its paces – or rather usability and functionality.
On the basis of a questionnaire we created, you test the website for usability. The organisation then receives this questionnaire and can use your feedback to improve the processes on the website.
6 | SIGN PETITIONS
Petitions can be a useful tool to make your voice heard politically. However, this requires a large number of signatories – if they are to be included in the plenary session of the Bundestag, even 50,000 in number. We have selected petitions for you in our blog (partly Corona-related) that we think are absolutely worthy of being signed.
7 | EVEN MORE CREATIVE VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES
Are you the creative type? Then you should take a look at youvo.org. This platform gives students and professionals from the design, communication and digital sectors the opportunity to use their skills for social projects and to strengthen their impact.
Would you like to discover more Online & Remote Volunteering opportunities? Then have a look at vostel.de!
We’ll keep you up to date
Through our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and our blog post #supportduringcorona we present many more exciting projects. Furthermore, we keep you up to date on interesting topics from the volunteering world.
Do you know of an online project or an initiative that is still missing here? Let us know and write a short mail to rebekka.hesse@vostel.de! 🙂
Take care! Your team from vostel.de
Further inspiration for online/remote volunteering can be found here:
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