Family Activities Volunteer
Thank you for your interest in volunteering here at Rainham Marshes!
The RSPB has almost 18,000 fantastic volunteers and they come from all walks of life.
Our volunteering roles can be tailored to your skills, interests and circumstances.
You do not have to be an RSPB member to volunteer with us.
If you are under 18 we need the permission of your parent or guardian before we can take you on as a volunteer.
Volunteer Role: Family Activities Volunteer – enthuse kids & families about nature!
Location: Rainham Marshes nature reserve (Essex)
Time commitment 1-2 days per month at weekends and school holidays (for a few hours per day) though very flexible.
Why we need you: Do you remember the thrill of finding your first ladybird, caterpillar or daisy? We're looking for people with a real passion for enthusing children and adults alike about the natural world to run very informal & small family activity sessions for families who visit Rainham Marshes nature reserve. If you’re a parent this could be a great thing to do with your child or children – you lead the session, they have fun doing the activity with other kids and families. Or equally if you fancy a bit of ‘me’ time then you can leave them at home with the babysitter for a couple of hours!
So, what do we mean by running ‘activity sessions’? It’s not scary, promise!
It’s stuff like taking kids pond dipping (we’d show you how this works beforehand if you’ve not done before), a bit of story telling, making fat cakes for birds, showing kids how to search for minibeasts (like spiders, worms and bugs!) and a bit of fun science (very simple science experiments to do with nature – again, we’d show you how to do these beforehand)
If you’re keen to give all these activities a go thats great, or if you’d prefer to just focus on your favourite activity and nothing else, eg, making fat cakes for birds or looking for minibeasts, then that’s fine with us too.
We’re also keen to expand the activities we already run so would welcome your ideas of what else we might try.
This is all about helping families make the most of their visit, starting to build a lifelong passion for nature, and so that they’ll come back again and again!
We’re really flexible on time commitment, whatever you can give is great and would be very welcomed. Of course we wouldn’t expect you to go out of pocket either so would fully reimburse your travel expenses to and from the reserve whenever you’re volunteering with us.
What’s in it for you?
Have fun, enjoy meeting new people, be a part of our friendly reserve team. Learn new skills, learn more about the wildlife at Rainham. Dip in and out, whenever you’ve got the time – if you’re parent then it could be a lovely opportunity to volunteer with your children. Though non-parents welcome too of course!
The RSPB is an active and exciting conservation charity, the largest in Europe! We can help you gain skills and give you a valuable insight into our work.
The skills
you need:You’d need to have bags of enthusiasm and genuinly enjoy working with youngsters & families. You’d also need to enjoy working outdoors, be well organised, a good communicator, have a keen interest in nature and be happy working in a team or on your own.
Ideally some basic knowledge of birds and insects would be great too, though if not we could pair you up with a more experienced volunteer initially who could show you the ropes.
Notes We’d reimburse your travel expenses to and from the reserve whenever you volunteer for us, invite you to reserve volunteer thank you events and of course support you fully in your role.
