Under 18

Lots of organisations will take on people under 18, and there are some opportunities that will only accept young volunteers. In fact, volunteering can have a huge impact on young people in particular.

Here are a few things you could do:

Search locally

• Your local volunteer centre and the postcode search at the top of this page can help you narrow down opportunities.

• Contact Vinspired .They fund volunteering programmes for under 25s, so you can search through these and be put in touch with their local teams.

Contact National charities

These organisations have youth programmes or are focussed entirely on under 18s.

• BTCV has conservation projects for 16-25 year olds.

• British Youth Council aims to get young people heard.  Offers campaigning and volunteering for under 25 year olds.

• CyberMentors is for 11-25 year olds, where you can talk to your peers online to tackle bullying.

• National Trust has a Youth Discovery programme for 16-18 year olds, mostly at weekends. 

• Prince’s Trust has projects for 14-30 year olds. 

• UK Youth Parliament is another way for you, if you’re 11-18 years old, to use your voice to make change happen. 

• WRVS supports older people in their communities and is keen to take on volunteers from 14 and up.

Other things to look at

• Junction49 is a TimeBank project that lets you to decide what you do as a volunteer. For people between 14-25, use the website to set up a project, event or campaign for an issue you care about. Through the site you can get advice, other volunteers and sometimes even funding for your own project.

• Duke of Edinburgh is a programme of personal development for 14-25 year olds, but volunteering plays a key part.

• Raleigh International offers overseas expeditions, some of them especially for 17-24 year olds. Although it’s volunteering you may be asked to fundraise before you go.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of things you can do, but the highlights we’ve been told about or have done ourselves. If you’ve had a brilliant time volunteering with an organisation let us know and we can put it on the list and make sure other volunteers hear about it.