Voluntary work alongside full-time job

[fredadi 26]

I am working working a full-time job 8Hrs a day 5 days a week and am looking for some voluntary work outside my normal job.

Particularly something where I can actually see myself helping a real cause, but also not a very demanding work at start.

I do give some money to charities on regular basis, however, that isn't fulfilling enough.

Any tips or ideas would be great.

P.S I'd love to do all kind of voluntary work, but have a special heart for animals, kids and old people.

[El Jeffo 27,839]

How's your German? If it isn't at a conversational level you'll probably have trouble connecting with kids and old people. Although if there's a bilingual kindergarten or elementary school in your area, you could volunteer to read stories to them.

 

I'm sure your local Tierheim (animal shelter) would be happy for the help as well.

[HH_Sailor 621]

Red cross, DLRG, Tierheim, Tafel are all looking : 

 

Ehrenamtssuche

[robinson100 11,214]

Voluntary Fire Brigade - you get to save cats from trees, to show the kids around the fire station and also to help look for old people who have gone missing...

We are always in search of new volunteers!!!

[swimmer 3,036]

I've previously worked with larger migrants' groups in Rhein Main.   They are quite often supporting those population groups you mention, including evenings and weekends.   That was pretty good in part because it was afterschool, evenings and weekends too - regular lunchpoints that we provided, generally hanging out, teaching kids English etc - and also helped me a lot of course.  I was a group member, really, that's a common way to do it here.   Not really volunteering, rather mutuality.   Your city authority can likely point you to them.

 

Caritas also is a place a lot of other foreigners I learned German with (and locals to obviously) did that sort of stuff, but perhaps less out of hours. 

 

One relatively simple job heaps of foreigners do here is election staffing.   I really like that.   It's compact timewise and at weekends, often very local, and there's even "refreshment money" (30 Euro or so).    You can sign up for the forthcoming Hesse one if you are German.   Otherwise go for the next local / EU one (and "local" can be more than people think - we have foreigner council, older people council etc).  It's an easy "give back" but it is very valuable because it's a really (anachronistically) labour intensive process and authorities need as many hands as are willing to do it.

 

This stuff also often runs  in a cycle.  I started with the election work because loads of people from the first group did it.  And indeed that first group came from another group I ran.  Once you hook into the scene, access to others is pretty easy.

 

Oh  yes, and another.  I help with the Frankfurt marathon occasionally and some other big events.  Start preparing for Euro 2024 now .(Again, get on the list for one and they will ask you for others).   How "voluntary" such big commercial events should be is arguable but they always tended to rely on local  city support in various ways.