It's International Volunteer Day today!
Volunteering is a rewarding way to make connections in your community.
It's a great way to make friends, professional relationships, to do something interesting and challenging with your spare time.
Often volunteering leads to employment.
After finishing uni at Massey University, I worked as a volunteer. At Te Manawa, (The Manawatu Museum) I worked as a Visitor Host. Speaking to groups of children and guiding their experience in the Fantastic (live!) Fish display was challenging and fun.
Te Manawa also offered schools a 'culture of the past' experience where children could churn the butter, use a printing press, and do the washing the way it was done in the 1900s.
In Christchurch you can volunteer at Canterbury Museum.
While looking for work in education, I chanced upon ARLA (The Adult Reading Association). This group provided very good training for its tutors, and work with a variety of clients - I worked with three ESOL students from Northern China, and a really nice Māori kuia who had had a stroke and needed to re-establish her reading pathways.
In Christchurch, Literacy Christchurch (formerly ARAS Adult Reading Assistance Scheme) perform this function in the community.
I've heard of WWoofing, and now I've found their website. Wwoofers are welcome all over New Zealand. I know of a group in Rangiwahia in the North Island that uses them. REACT (The Rangiwahia Environmental Arts Trust) farm organically and grow wicker - being responsible for the Chinese Lantern Festival in Palmerston North. They also run groups in Wellington, making ethnic sculptures with delighted new artists.
Add a comment to: International Volunteer Day: 5 December 2017