What's involved?
Thanks to the wide range of services we offer, we have lots of volunteering roles available all year round. We regularly share open roles, and during our busy night shelter season are always looking for people to support our guests. You don’t need any previous volunteering experience, just a willingness to help and a desire to make a difference.
What commitment do you require?
Volunteering with us is easy and can fit around your other commitments as we have roles across the day, evening, and night. If you feel you can’t volunteer regularly but would still like to help, we always have gaps in our rotas to fill if you can spare some time on an ad-hoc basis.
Examples of volunteering
Hour a week
Ad-hoc hours – we’re always looking for volunteers for emergency shift cover, one off projects and also specialist skills e.g. DIY, HR, IT for emergency or impromptu support.
Hours a week
You could help with laundry, keep our busy kitchen clean, sort out clothes donations, cook for us from your own home.
Hours a week
You could help with a regular weekly or fortnightly shift in our café serving food and drink, or help in our winter night shelters.
FAQs
I am free to help. Do you have any opportunities?
The support we need from volunteers varies each month please see our current list of roles at unitymk.org/volunteerroles
What would I be doing?
You could be helping in the kitchen reheating meals, making drinks and serving food, spending time chatting to guests or supporting our welfare team with individual guest needs or paperwork. Around Unity Park Station you could be doing laundry loads, supporting the Wednesday food bank, deep cleaning the kitchen or generally tidying up.
Is there any training?
We provide guidance and training to all volunteers prior to their first shift with us whatever role they’ve applied for. We offer level 2 food safety and hygiene training to anyone who has volunteered to help in the kitchen. We’re always available to answer questions.
I can’t help on a regular basis? Can I still help?
We always need volunteers and have plenty of tasks that can be done on an ad-hoc basis – please contact us to discuss.
I can only help during the daytime?
No problem! We have a number of services that run during the day supported by volunteers. please see our current list of roles at unitymk.org/volunteerroles
What should I wear?
Something that’s comfortable and casual that you’re not worried about getting dirty!
I don’t have any specialist skills or qualifications can I still volunteer?
Yes, most of our roles don’t require any specialist skills. We’ll provide all the training and guidance you need before you start volunteering with us
I love cooking, can I cook for your guests?
We have Cooks in the Community who cook at home and drop meals to us. Cooks can choose how many meals to cook and a frequency that works for them individually. All guidance will be provided, and expenses reimbursed. Please note we will require all cooks to have completed a Level 2 Food and Hygiene certificate and can provide details of a short online course for this, at no cost to yourself. Apply here
Meet Kuljit
Community Cook
I was looking to support a charity locally in Milton Keynes and the volunteering process to sign up at UnityMK was really simple. It was my 25th wedding anniversary and I decided to give myself a gift by using my skills to help others – and it’s been the best experience!
I love using my cooking skills to support those who need a hot meal. I work in Milton Keynes so it’s easy for me to pop out and drop the meals off I have made. At some point in the future, I’d love to be able to rescue food locally and then turn that into meals.
If anyone was thinking about volunteering at UnityMK, I would say don’t think – just do it. Have no expectations, expect nothing in return other than heartfelt joy that you have helped fill someone’s belly. Genuinely that’s it. Just give give all you have to give, always. It will come back 100-fold and more.
Meet Tracy
Welfare Cafe Volunteer
I already had in mind when I had some spare time, I would volunteer with a charity which helps the homeless and during the winter period I often saw adverts for the winter night shelters at UnityMK. So, when the time was right for me, I looked it up online and found the roles that needed filling which fit in with my home and work commitments.
I love to be busy and if I can do that and feel like I’m making a contribution however small, that is a bonus. All the guests are very pleasant and polite despite their current challenges, and it feels good to be able to help in a small way and provide them with hot meals at the end of what can be a very long day for them. Meeting the other volunteers is great too and everyone mucks in.
If anyone was thinking about volunteering at UnityMK I would say do it! Any spare time you have could be beneficial and you will make new friends and be helping others at the same time. I’m glad I started volunteering and I look forward to my shift each fortnight.
Get in touch
We’d love you to join our incredible team of volunteers! If you’re interested in joining our specialist skills volunteers list, can’t find the answer you’re looking for in our FAQs, or would like to find out more about corporate volunteering opportunities with us please get in touch with our Operations Team here.
