
Explore the latest volunteering opportunities, on-campus, locally and online. We'll update these opportunities regularly, so keep checking back to view the newest!
These can be used towards your RED Awards activities. Not signed up? Find out more and register for the RED Awards.
*Please note, there are University policies regarding work and study for full-time students applied to volunteering. You can find out more about the limitations of this on our work and study page.
Accessibility & Inclusion
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
Be My Eyes Volunteer | Provide virtual assistance to the visually impaired through the ‘Be My Eyes’ app. This app allows a visually impaired individual to live video call a volunteer for help with tasks such as: checking expiry dates, distinguishing colours, reading instructions and navigating surroundings. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 |
Dimension | Dimensions support people with learning difficulties and autism to achieve more. They have a number of online volunteering opportunities available, including project assistant or in-person football buddy. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 |
Guide Dogs | Guide Dogs helps blind and partially sighted people across the UK through the provision of guide dogs, mobility and other rehabilitation services. They have a range of voluntary roles, and you can search by your postcode to find opportunities close to you. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 |
Hidayah | Hidayah provide support, education and welfare for the Muslim LGBTQ+ community. Hidayah are currently seeking volunteers to assist with sponsorships and fundraising. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 5, 10 |
ILGA World | As an ILGA World volunteer, you will be joining in the global fight to end human rights violations against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, whilst gaining experience in the working with an international non-government organisation. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 5, 10 |
Keen London | If you enjoy sports and fun, volunteer with KEEN London and help them run free weekly sport and game sessions for children and young adults (age 5-25) with a wide range of disabilities. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 3 |
Me2Club | Me2 Club is a charity who support children with additional needs and disabilities in the Wokingham and Reading Boroughs attending mainstreams activities such as uniform groups, sports clubs and drama groups. This is achieved by matching a child with a 1-1 volunteer who can support them throughout such activities. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 5, 10 |
Sense Volunteer | Sense provides those with complex disabilities with support and opportunities to experience the world. Sense offers varied volunteering roles such as volunteering in a Sense shop, joining an Sense holiday, volunteering as a Sense buddy or even giving time to a Sense fundraising group. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 |
Smart Works | What will you be doing? Smart Works Reading opened in October 2015 with a vision of bringing the dressing and interview coaching service to women within the Thames Valley for free. | Both | RED Award- Volunteer Hours,
RED Sustainable Action Award SDG 5 |
Tarjimly Volunteer | The Tarjimly app connects refugees, asylees, immigrants, and those that support them with multilingual volunteer translators. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
TED Talk Translator | TED Translators are a community of volunteers who subtitle TED talks so that the talks may reach a global audience. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Global Engagement Award |
VocaliD Volunteer | VocaliD volunteers record personal voice notes for VocaliD to enhance their research in building unique digital voices to uplift those who rely on assistive technology, and to diversify the voices they hear. | Online | RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Animal Welfare
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
Charity Buddy | Charity Buddy help volunteers to support animal welfare organisations whilst using existing expertise. They advertise a range of different opportunities to support organisations and projects. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Take action for insects volunteer | Help The Wildlife Trusts in taking action for insects and see how you can practically help the insects in your own home and garden! | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 15 |
Run, Herring, Run! Volunteer | Help count emigrating herring through online footage to help researchers further understand this threatened fish species. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 14 |
Arts
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
The Rising Suns Arts Centre | The Rising Sun Arts Centre is an award-winning, independent arts centre. There are a variety of volunteering opportunities, including bar work, marketing and fundraising. |
In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Thames Valley Police Vocalists Volunteers | Thames Valley Police Vocals is a choir that performs at events including their Open Day, carol concerts and Road Death Memorial Service. They are looking for volunteers to join the choir at events and Saturday morning rehearsals. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Community
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
CSSC (Civil Service Sports Council) Volunteer | CSSC is a volunteer organisation, with each region and area within it run by a team of volunteers who manage the area finances, run local events, local sport, help with marketing or communications. CSSC is looking for volunteers who would start up and support online and virtual activities, that encourage members to get active and feel happier. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Girl Guiding Volunteer | A girl guiding volunteer will volunteer with girls at unit meetings every week. Volunteers can choose to work with Rainbows, Brownies, Guides or Rangers. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Museums Partnership Reading (The MERL and Reading Museum) | The Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL) and Reading Museum aim to offer volunteering opportunities to the local community to improve wellbeing, connect people to their personal histories and identities, and get to know more about Reading's rich cultural heritage. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
National Youth Engagement Work | Join a group of active citizens who are enthusiastic about impacting change in their community. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Conservation
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
eBird Volunteer | Assisting in global bird research by simply tracking your bird sighting on the eBird website - contributing to a community network of worldwide birdwatchers. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 15 |
Project Plumage | Help to extract colour information to answer key questions about bird colour evolution by analysing photographed museum specimens. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
RSPB Volunteer | RSPB offer a wide range of volunteering opportunities dependent on the requirements of your local centre. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 15 |
ZSL Volunteer | Supporting ZSL conservation work by tagging animals seen in live videos and images provided by ZSL. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 15 |
Zooniverse Project Volunteer | Zooniverse offers a few different volunteering roles, from data analysis, beta tester and project moderators to help moderate discussions and act as a point of contact for the project. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - depends on activity RED Global Engagement Award - depends on activity |
Creative
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
American Cancer Society Virtual Volunteer | You will work alongside team members to complete a ‘Relay for Life’ - a virtual online relay completed using avatars in the ‘Second Life’ 3D virtual world. This virtual event raises money for the American Cancer Society. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
CHD Living Volunteer | ‘Adopt a Grandparent’ campaign partners an individual with an elderly in CHD Living Home, to provide them with company through having phone/video calls and sending photos/postcards/letter via post or email. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
HenPal Volunteer | As a HenPal volunteer you will become a ‘pen pals’ with an elderly individual to create friendships through letter writing or visual correspondence, reducing social isolation among older people and engaging their interests. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Letters Against Isolation | Send Self-Isolating Seniors Letters to Brighten Their Days! | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Post pals |
Help Post Pals to ‘post a smile on a sick child’s face’ by sending cards, letters and little gifts to ill children and their siblings in the UK. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Loving Hands Volunteer | Using knitting, sewing and crocheting skills to craft items to donate to charities and groups all over the world. There are various Loving Hands groups across the UK, more information on this is available on the website. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Sands | Knit or crochet blankets to go inside memory boxes to bring comfort to parents after the death of a baby | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Education
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
CoachBright | Volunteer to coach school pupils from low-income backgrounds in person or online for one hour per week for 8 weeks to help them improve their grades, confidence and ability to realise their ambition. You'll get full training in how to coach and can draw on CoachBright's extensive library of resources for support with session planning. You will also be supported by a programme officer every step of the way. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 RED Global Engagement Award |
Help refugees and asylum-seekers in Berkshire to practice and learn English on a one-to-one basis. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 RED Global Engagement Award |
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The Access Project | Help a student from a disadvantaged background beat the odds and get to a top university by signing up as a volunteer tutor with The Access Project. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 |
Tutor the Nation | Tutor The Nation is looking for university students, recent graduates and experienced tutors to volunteer 1 hour per week to provide free 1:1 online tutoring to disadvantaged GCSE and A-level students. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 |
Learning Ally Volunteer |
Learning Ally relies on volunteers to share their talents and create human-read audiobooks that provides support in helping them reach the 30 million students who struggle to read. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 |
Studenteer |
Studenteer was formed to serve as an educational platform encouraging the next generation of professionals to develop skills in the world of work, support a cause that matters to them and virtually network with a diverse range of individuals and organisations during this challenging time. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 |
Projects
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
By the People | Help transcribe Library of Congress documents. Volunteers create and review transcriptions to improve search, access, and discovery of these pages from history. |
Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Crowd2map helps girls fleeing female genital mutilation (FGM) who come from very remote villages, that are absent from any map. Volunteers contribute their time to adding roads and buildings into a free open-source global map, so that help can reach those in remote locations. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
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Distributed Proofreaders Volunteer | Distributed Proofreaders convert public domain books into eBooks. Volunteering for Distributed Proofreaders is great for someone with an eye for detail and passion for preserving literary history. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
F Cancer volunteer | Become a remote F cancer volunteer and help support charities fighting cancer. You can join a variety of projects to help from website design to social media. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
LibriVox Volunteer |
This role required reading and recording chapters of books within the public domain (books no longer under copyright) and make them available for free on the internet. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Global Engagement Award |
Localgiving | Localgiving support thousands of local charities and community groups with their online fundraising every day. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 4 |
Maturity of Baby Sounds Volunteer | Help researchers to understand the early stages of language learning by classifying short recordings of babies’ speech sounds. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Missing Maps Volunteer | This role requires you to use OpenStreetMap to help map areas where humanitarian organizations are trying to meet the needs of vulnerable people. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
Phrase Detectives | Phrase detectives helps to improve future generations of language technology by indicating relationships between words and phrases, to create a resource rich in linguistic information. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Global Engagement Award |
Project Implicit | You will be required to assist in psychological research on thoughts and feelings by taking an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of various topics. | Online | RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Reach Volunteer | Reach volunteering will match individuals with specialist professional skills, such as in IT, to charities requiring their help on either short-term projects or ongoing projects. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - depends on activity RED Global Engagement Award -depends on activity |
Smithsonian Digital Volunteer | This role involves using transcription to make historical documents and biodiversity data more available. | Online | RED Award - Volunteer Hours |
Translate Without Borders Volunteer | You will be required to be fluent in one other language, other than your native language. There is various engaging projects where translating assistance is required. There are also other volunteer roles such as graphic or webpage designers. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award -SDG 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
Welfare
Opportunity | What will you be doing? | Online or in person? | Awards Link |
Amnesty Decoders Volunteers | Using your device to sift through pictures, information and documents to help expose human right violations. There are various projects available on their website. |
Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10, 16 RED Global Engagement Award |
Some of those you will be helping will need emotional support as they are experiencing loneliness and isolation. Others may need help accessing their medication or food, or to be signposted to an external agency who can provide further support. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 2, 3 |
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Cancer Research UK Shop Volunteer | As a Cancer Research UK Shop Volunteer, you will have the opportunity to be involved in many aspects of the day to day running of the store including sorting stock, customer service, till work, window dressing and more. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Care4Calais | Support asylum seekers and refugees as they arrive in the UK with a range of support tasks including things that can be done both virtually and in-person. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
Centrepoint Volunteer | Centrepoint is a charity that has a positive impact on homeless young people’s lives. Through various roles, Centrepoint’s volunteers support young people’s career ambitions, engage them with their services and programmes, help them into accommodation or give them a little extra nudge to try something new. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Change Grow |
As a Volunteer Recovery Outreach support, you will be working with a team to support people with their or their own loved ones’ drug and/or alcohol issues. |
In- person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Crisis Text Line Volunteer | Provide online support for those in a crisis over text. Volunteers aid those texting the crisis text line through active listening, collaborative problem solving and safety planning. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 3 |
FoodCycle | FoodCycle provides free, nutritious takeaway meals to those in the community who needs it. FoodCycle volunteer roles include cooking, collecting or hosting | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 1, 2 |
Forward | Be part of our global network working towards ending FGM, child marriage and violence against women and girls. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 3, 5, 10 RED Global Engagement Award |
Freerice | When playing Freerice, every correct question answer triggers an advertisement that appear on your screen. Every advertisement you see provides a financial payment to the World Food Programme to support changing lives across the globe. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 1, 2 RED Global Engagement Award |
National Youth Advocacy Service | The National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) is a UK charity providing children's rights and socio-legal services. It offers information, advice, advocacy and legal representation to children, young people and vulnerable adults though a network of advocates throughout England and Wales. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 10 |
NHS Volunteer Responder | The NHS are recruiting volunteer responders to help secure the NHS and social care sector during COVID-19. There are varying roles available (listed on application website). | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award -SDG 3 |
Royal Air Forces Association | Volunteering for the RAF Association is a great way of developing your skills and meeting new people, at the same time as supporting members of the RAF community in your local area who need your help. | Online | RED Award - Volunteer Hours |
Royal Voluntary Service | "Our volunteers work in a wide variety of roles; from offering companionship to people who are socially isolated, to providing practical help to those recovering from illness, to working on hospital wards or helping at a vaccination site." | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Royal Voluntary Service - Hospital Volunteer | Supporting the NHS, the Royal Voluntary Service offers a wide range of hospital volunteer opportunities. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 3 |
Samaritan Listening Volunteer | As a listening volunteer you’ll answer calls and messages from people who really need someone to talk to. You’ll be based in one of 201 branches in the UK. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Starting Point |
Starting Point provides mentoring and creates opportunities for young people in the Reading area. The young people are predominantly vulnerable or facing disadvantage, not in education, employment, or training, or are at risk of leaving education early/being excluded. By partnering with the local community, we match each young person to a mentor who is best suited to them. The mentor provides consistent and reliable support, helping the young person towards a brighter and more hopeful future whilst celebrating small steps along the way. |
In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Student Minds | One in three students report clinical levels of psychological distress, with students facing academic, social and financial challenges. We believe it does not need to be this way, all students and members of the university community should be able to thrive at university. Join us and become part of a passionate and innovative team working hard to transform the state of student mental health. | Both |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
Sue Ryder Retail Volunteer | As a Sue Ryder Shop Volunteer you will have the opportunity to be involved in many aspects of the day to day running of the store including sorting stock, customer service, till work, window dressing and more. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |
The Sapphire Foundation Soup Kitchen | The Sapphire Foundation Soup Kitchen rely on their donations and volunteers to support and feed over 150 people every week. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 1, 2 |
Trussell Trust Foodbank Volunteer | Local foodbanks across the nation are requiring volunteers to: sort and pack food donations in their warehouses, collecting donations from supermarkets, delivering food to those in greatest need | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 1, 2 |
UN Volunteers | UN volunteering offers lots of different online volunteering opportunities depending on your skills. These skills may range from translation, writing and editing, technology development, research, art and design. | Online or in-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award -depending on activity RED Global Engagement Award - depending on activity |
Volunteer West Berkshire | Providing help to those most vulnerable in the local community during Covid-19, this includes tasks such as: delivering essential items, providing transport to appointments.There are similar volunteer schemes available in most areas nationwide, however, tasks may slightly vary. | In-person |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours RED Sustainable Action Award - SDG 3 |
7 Cups Volunteer | 7 Cups listeners offer emotional support to those that need it via online chat by simply listening to their personal troubles. | Online |
RED Award- Volunteer Hours |