Make the world a better place from the comfort of your own home with these online volunteering opportunities. Each website offers a different way for you to use your time, knowledge, or skills to improve the lives of other people.
And you can do all of them without setting a foot outside the door.
Create Audiobooks and Reading Materials
If you’re a fan of books, take advantage of these online volunteering opportunities to create audiobooks or proofread public domain texts.
1. LibriVox
LibriVox is a source of public domain audiobooks that anyone can download and listen to for free. If you have a microphone and some free recording software, volunteer your voice and record a chapter yourself.
2. Learning Ally
Learning Ally helps struggling learners achieve their full potential. Volunteer to record audiobooks from your home to aid aural learners in their studies. Alternatively, you can offer quality assurance and feedback to existing audiobooks instead.
3. Bookshare
Bookshare makes eBooks more accessible to children and adults with disabilities. Readers can listen to audio descriptions, read Braille, or enlarge and highlight the font. And you can help by volunteering remotely to scan books, proofread passages, or describe images.
4. Distributed Proofreaders
If you’ve ever read a free book from Project Gutenberg, then you’ve benefitted from the work of online volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders. Volunteer your own time to proofread public domain ebooks, manage projects, provide new content.
Contribute to Important Research Projects
Some of the most enjoyable virtual volunteering opportunities include taking part in research projects. These projects cover everything from cartography to zoology.
5. Zooniverse
Zooniverse is a popular platform for people-powered research. You don’t need any prior expertise or scientific knowledge. Just head to the Projects page and contribute your time to anything that takes your fancy: from animal recognition to solar storms.
6. Smithsonian Digital Volunteer
Join the Smithsonian Digital Volunteer program to preserve historical documents and keep them widely accessible. That might involve transcribing field notes, diaries, ledgers, logbooks, manuscripts, and more.
7. Amnesty Decoders
Register with Amnesty Decoders to research and expose human rights violations. You may need to analyze tweets, scour satellite imagery, or pore through countless documents. Contribute as much or as little time as you can to make companies accountable for their misdeeds.
8. Missing Maps
Some of the most vulnerable communities in the world aren’t even on the maps. This makes it difficult for crisis teams and first responders to get where they need to be in an emergency. Volunteer to trace satellite imagery into OpenStreetMap from your home and fill in the last blank spots on the globe.
Help Others to Study and Learn
Volunteer online to act as a tutor for those in need. That might mean helping students to study for their next exam. Or educating isolated seniors on interesting new topics.
9. Learn to Be
Learn to Be is a non-profit organization offering free or low-cost tutoring to children from kindergarten to 12th grade. You don’t need to be a teacher to volunteer as a tutor. Anyone can sign up and start helping students in one-to-one virtual study sessions.
10. School in the Cloud
Start your own Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) to inspire creativity, curiosity, and wonder across the world. School in the Cloud provides all the resources you need to get started and find a modern way to teach people across the globe.
11. UPchieve
Volunteer as a coach with UPchieve to help high-school students from low-income backgrounds with math tutoring, homework, and test prep. Using a one-to-one virtual classroom, you can fit lessons around your own schedule.
12. Self Help VSC
Self Help VSC provides a place for homebound senior citizens to connect, learn, and play together online. As a virtual volunteer, you can lead a one-hour class or activity. Pick a topic of your choice and use your passion to share knowledge with an older generation.
Offer Your Abilities to Those Without Them
Technology is constantly advancing to help improve the lives of differently-abled people across the globe. Using the options below, you can volunteer your own abilities to help those people without them.
13. Be My Eyes
Be My Eyes is one of several volunteering apps you can use to help blind and low-vision users. You can help by checking expiration dates, distinguishing colors, or reading instructions.
14. BeSpecular
With BeSpecular, visually-impaired people will send you photos and voice messages asking you to act as their eyes. As a “Sightling” volunteer, you might need to do everything from identifying medicine bottles to matching outfits.
15. VocaliD
VocaliD specializes in creating unique virtual voices for brands and individuals without the ability to speak. You can record and volunteer your own voice to this project, to be blended and used by other people. Although you should know that VocaliD may profit off your voice while using it to help other people.
16. Translators Without Borders
If you speak a second language fluently, volunteer online to translate important documents for those who need them. That might include translating medical reports or crisis response documents. All you need to do is sign up to start helping people.
Mentor People Through Difficult Career Changes
There are a lot of people looking for new careers in need of advice or guidance. Offer your own wisdom by mentoring with these online volunteering opportunities.
17. Skills for Change
Skills for Change is a Canadian organization offering education and training opportunities for immigrants and refugees seeking work. You can work in a wide range of roles as a remote volunteer. As a mentor, you can offer advice about a career in your field.
18. CareerVillage
At CareerVillage, students can learn more about potential careers by asking real-world professionals. Sign up as a Professional to answer questions that come up around your line of work. In doing so, you might inspire young students to follow in your footsteps.
19. Hire Heroes USA
Hire Heroes USA helps military personnel transition to civilian life with new careers. This is a challenging prospect for most. But you can ease the journey by volunteering to run mock interviews, offer counseling advice, or help with complex application forms.
20. American Corporate Partners
American Corporate Partners (ACP) helps both military veterans and their loved ones to find new careers. Sign up as a mentor to remotely volunteer your time and career expertise. In doing so, you can help veterans find fulfilling new employment.
Reach Out to People Who Need You
Volunteering online doesn’t need to get complicated. Sometimes the best way to help someone is by reaching out and talking to them. Here are some online volunteering opportunities which allow you to do that.
21. Adopt a Nursing Home
This website lets you adopt a Texas nursing home and send letters of support to the residents and staff members there. These small tokens of humanity are incredibly valuable to people in the nursing home, who might struggle to connect with the outside world in other ways.
22. CHD Living
At CHD living you can adopt a grandparent to help them combat loneliness. As an online volunteer, you make video calls, share pictures, or swap stories. Hopefully, over time, you can build a wonderful new friendship.
23. StoriiTime
Support isolated seniors while improving your child’s literary and social skills with StoriiTime. This service sets up a free StoriiTime video call between your child and a senior citizen, allowing them to read to one another for everyone’s benefit.
24. USO
Send a message of support to armed forces members through the USO website. It only takes a moment to send your message—whether you write it yourself or use one of the preset options—but it could make a world of difference to the person on the other side.
Find More Volunteering Opportunities Online
You can take advantage of any of these online volunteering opportunities without setting foot outside your home. But there are plenty of real-world volunteering opportunities you can sign up for online.
Take a look at the best volunteering websites and filter the results to find opportunities near you.
Read the full article: 24 Ways to Volunteer Online From Your Home
from MakeUseOf https://ift.tt/2A6pMhR
via IFTTT
0 comments: