Volunteer locally with our Community Network

Our volunteer program has been in a state of growth for the past year or so, and today we’ve opened up applications to our new Community Network.

Our hope for this new volunteering stream is that it will enable everyone who wants to get involved, regardless of how much time you have, to be able to support our work. With the steady rise in the number of vegan organisations and charities, it’s important that we all keep working together and adapting to the changing environment, to ensure the best results for people, the planet, and the animals.

We strongly believe in the power of connecting people and building relationships, and that is the core premise of the Community Network. Local volunteers know their community best, and we want to work openly and collaboratively with vegans across the country to speak to their neighbors and friends in a way that is positive, progressive, and well informed. 

Our mission statement as a charity is to make it easier for more people to go vegan and stay vegan. This is at the heart of everything we do, and is why we simultaneously focus on educational outreach, and game changing legislative campaigning. Our multi-faceted approach has been making wins for 75 years, and we aren’t stopping here. This new Network of dedicated volunteers will help us to spread our message wider, and in more voices. We know from our own research that people are more likely to listen to someone they know than a large organization, that’s why we’re always so passionately involving volunteers in all our work. 

But, with all that said, we can’t make this work through passion alone. We need you. 

This network has been built with the variety of our vegan community in mind. From students with flexible time to people who work a full-time job with three voluntary roles on the side, the network can work for you.

There are two levels of involvement you can have:
1.    Organiser
2.    Advocate

The Organisers in the network will be the main points of contact for staff and will keep that communication open. They will be responsible for steering the group and making final calls on how the group will work. Everyone other than the Organiser is an Advocate. This role is the most flexible role we have in the volunteer program, as it is totally adaptable to how much time you have. If you have the odd Saturday around child-care, that’s fine, you can be in the network and go along when you can. If you have several days a week and you want to do loads and eventually become an Organiser, great! You can work closely with your group’s Organiser and keep building those skills and supporting them in running the group. It really is whatever you want it to be. 

The only reason we have the two roles is so that staff are only ever communicating with one person per group. We decided to do this in order to create the best possible volunteer experience for the groups, with a clear line of communication and the best information possible. As a small charity with limited staff resources, having volunteer coordinators out on the ground will be invaluable in growing our community presence and making a real difference for the animals. 

Recent research shows that 45% of volunteers in the UK are managed by another volunteer, so this path is well trodden, and we really believe it’s the way we can provide the best possible experience to everyone who wants to volunteer with us.

If you’re interested in learning more about the network, and applying to either of the roles, check out the web pages, and pop in an application. 

For any questions or clarifications, you can email the volunteer team on volunteer[at]vegansociety[dot]com
At TVS we have a mantra: “One world. Many lives. Our choice”. We look forward to your voice joining ours to call for a vegan future.