10 Ways to Volunteer Remotely During COVID-19
Sometimes time is all you have, and now is the perfect time to give
We are nearing week five of our nation’s isolation trial, and the end does not look like it is in sight just yet. For me, the first few weeks of quarantine were made especially hard because I lost my volunteering commitments. I and my school group worked most weekends at a homeless shelter, and the chance to feel productive and find community was something that kept me looking forward to every Saturday. Now that school is shut down, we had to make a difficult phone call and cancel our commitments for the rest of the year. After a week of mindless scrolling that wrought havoc on my mental health, I began to search out ways to spend my time that would still impact the world around me, albeit digitally. The following volunteer opportunities I have researched are 100% online/remote, and are sure to help you feel like you are making a difference even in your sweatpants!
Projects to Help with School Shutdowns
- Read Books with Save with Stories
#SAVEWITHSTORIES is a campaign created in partnership with Save the Children and No Kid Hungry both to raise awareness of food insecurity in light of school closures and to read to kids stuck without storytime. Those trips to the library you cherished as a child have unfortunately been delayed for a lot of modern kids, and parents can only read Pete the Cat so many times. To volunteer with Save with Stories, post an IGTV video of you reading a children’s book (funny voices and all!) and tag @savewithstories when you post. Make sure that your account is public and have lots of fun reliving your childhood stories! Tired parents around the world will thank you for your efforts!
2. Tutor with Learn To Be
There is no doubt that online schooling doesn’t work for every kid, and experts predict that without intervention a large portion of children will be behind in their education due to COVID-19. This is especially more likely to impact children in lower-income households or with working parents who don’t have access to one-on-one support. The non-profit Learn To Be is currently recruiting volunteer tutors to meet one-on-one with kids over the Internet who may need help with their assignments. The application process takes only 10–15 minutes, and scheduling is flexible!
3. Be Pen Pals with Blue Monarch
Blue Monarch is a women’s shelter in Tennessee that is now housing both women and their children 24/7 due to school closures. To help the younger residents ward off boredom, Blue Monarch welcomes individuals to sign up to be pen pals with a specific child. Being a pen pal entails sending at least one to two letters a month to your assigned child. Pen pals are also welcome to send small cash gifts as well. This is a great way for you to dust off your stationery, support the local postal service, and have a deadline so you can remember what day it is all at the same time!
4. Record Audiobooks with Learning Ally
Learning Ally aims to empower students who struggle with dyslexia or visual impairments fall in love with reading. Especially because of online school, at-home reading will be more important than ever. Audiobooks are an especially great way to help struggling readers get started. Learning Ally is asking for volunteers to record audiobooks from their own home; you can make a pop filter out of a clothes hanger and pantyhose and use your phone as a microphone. Speaker shy? The organization also welcomes individuals to listen to recordings for quality assurance.
Projects to Help Hospitals
5. Sew Masks for Middlesex Health
Frankly, there are many hospitals around the United States and abroad that would be happy to receive a donation of cloth face masks for their patients and healthcare personnel. Some hospitals are requesting traditional cloth masks, while others are asking for N-95 covers to make their low supply run longer. Check with your local hospital on their policy before donating. For Middlesex Health, one can send in completed masks by mail, and JOANN Fabric Stores are giving away materials for any volunteer crafters. You can learn how to make a face mask and download the pattern here.
6. Make Cards for Hospitalized Children
With hospitals doubling down on visitor restrictions, many young patients are feeling increasingly isolated from their family and friends. Card-making is a great way to lift their spirits, and it is a great way to involve any younger members of your household in the volunteering effort. The organization Cards for Hospitalized Kids will accept cards mailed to their Illinois address and will distribute them accordingly to hospitals around the country. Some basic guidelines for making cards: don’t mention COVID-19 or phrases like “get better soon.” Rather, try your best to make the cards something that would brighten the kids’ days.
Projects with Senior Citizens
7. Adopt a Phone Pal with Dorot
Kids aren’t the only ones feeling lonely; many seniors who are self-isolating can feel cut off from their family and social network. In order to give those in isolation the opportunity to talk with someone, Dorot is recruiting individuals for their Caring Calls program. If accepted into the program, volunteers are asked to call a senior twice a week in order to check up on them and offer them a chance for conversation.
Projects in Academia
8. Become a Historical Scribe with the Coolidge Foundation
The Coolidge Foundation is currently crowdsourcing the transcription of ALL of the speeches of the 1920s president. Coincidentally, Calvin Coolidge’s presidential inauguration was not in Washington DC but in his Vermont home after Warren Harding’s death (definitely an interesting factoid as we remain stuck inside). Nevertheless, Coolidge’s thoughts and sentiments on 1920s America are interesting to reflect on from your 2020 vision. After filling out a quick form, you will be assigned a digital speech to transcribe and/or check for errors. Expect anything from the opening remarks of a Latin-American peace conference to a response to a service project from the early Boy Scouts! When the speech transcriptions are posted online, you can either be attributed below the speech you transcribed or choose to remain anonymous.
9. Help Crowd-Sourced Research with Zooniverse
Zooniverse is a website for researchers to crowdsource large tasks such as qualitative data interpretation with the help of individuals like you. For example, the project Bash the Bug on Zooniverse asks volunteers to identify bacterial growth on Petri dishes in order to research antibiotic resistance. Another project, Mapping Historic Skies, asks volunteers to identify constellations in historical paintings in order to study the history of astronomy in various cultures. With nearly 100 different projects to volunteer for, there’s sure to be something that strikes your fancy.
10. Catalog History with the Smithsonian
Similar to the Coolidge Speech Project, the Smithsonian is also asking for individuals to help transcribe their materials into digital formats. The options for transcription include everything from 1950s advertisements to naturalist field notes in 1908 New Mexico. The Smithsonian is also looking for multilingual volunteers to help translate and transcribe documents in languages other than English. The projects on this interface are quite long, but you are free to log on at any time to contribute any amount; there is a rough average of 90 contributors to each project!
Lastly, remember to take care of yourself first in this crazy time. Even though it may be easy to feel like one has to do everything now that there is a smidgen of free time, a global pandemic is a traumatic event that you may need time to go through. Volunteering is a great way to relieve some stress, but remember that you can’t help others if you don’t help yourself first.
