Volunteer

Volunteering for ILGA-Europe

ILGA-Europe carries out very important work towards equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people at European level .This is a growing organisation, both in its size and its professionalism. Such growth of the organisation means the board and staff often need volunteers to support their work. We believe volunteering work is mutually beneficial. For us having volunteers means more work will be done and more quickly. For volunteers this provides an opportunity to gain experience and contribute their skills and time to a very dynamic, diverse and exciting organisation working towards noble aims.

What can you do?

Below you will find a short description of ILGA-Europe’s organisational structure which will help you understand how exactly the organisation works. We also provide a list of activities which we might require from time to time. These are just some ideas on the type of volunteer work we require. Our busy agenda some times demands other types of work and whenever we need such help, we will publish it on our website or contact those who expressed their interests in volunteering for us.

From where can you volunteer?

ILGA-Europe’s office is located in Brussels and in-house volunteer activities are offered for volunteers who are already in Brussels and/or are planning to be here for a while and can spare their time while in Brussels. Nevertheless, there are various ways how volunteers from all over Europe can contribute their skills, knowledge and time to ILGA-Europe’s work.

Firstly , from time to time we require some assistance which does not require your presence in Brussels and can be achieved from your home country and these activities involve data collecting and information compiling from Internet, writing articles, helping us keep updated your country pages on our website for example.

Secondly , do not forget that ILGA-Europe is a federation of more than 200 groups throughout Europe and by volunteering and helping these groups you are also helping ILGA-Europe! Therefore we advise you to learn more about LGBT organisations in your own countries and finding the possibility of volunteering for them. In our LGBT Guide to Europe you will find a section with an individual page for each European country. There you will find links to various organisations in each country:
www.ilga-europe.org/europe/guide/country_by_country

Thirdly , we always require personal stories/testimonies from LGBT people demonstrating what types of discrimination and inequalities they are still facing in Europe. We want to hear about your experiences as they help us greatly in lobbying work with various European institutions. They are living proof behind research and statistics of existing injustices! Such stories and testimonies are also very often required by the national media. By providing us with such stories and authorising us to use them during our lobbying and media work, we will together raise the profile of existing discrimination and put a human face to it. Such an approach sometimes is much more effective that dry research and statistics. We are currently developing a case study form which will appear here soon.

Who are we looking for?

While we appreciate the numerous volunteering offers we receive almost daily from a great variety of people, taking into account the organisation’s strategic objectives, structure and agenda, we are looking for volunteers with specific skills, knowledge, or experiences. The list of activities below is a good identification of skills we frequently require - filing, typing, data collation, proofreading, and translations, mailing. But this list is not exhaustive and some times we might need different skills.

Do I need to be specialist on LGBT issues?

While it is not essential for our volunteers to be familiar with the issues of LGBT rights in great detail, sometimes awareness and knowledge of some specific issue is of great benefit as ILGA-Europe mainly works with such principal European organisations and their institutions as the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This specifically applies to volunteers willing to help us in terms of proof-reading, policy and research, translations.

What languages do I need to speak to volunteer for ILGA-Europe?

While sometimes knowledge of various languages is essential, specifically for translation work and obtaining information on situations in specific countries, the working language of ILGA-Europe is English and therefore for most activities we require from our volunteers a very good command of English (you have to be a native English speaker for proof reading works).

Organisation structure

Examples of tasks we might require:

• Translations of documents
• Compiling data from internet
• Proof-reading
• Creating articles, mail shots
• Compiling evaluation data from events

We suggest reading our current Strategic Plan 2005-2008 which highlights the organisation’s priorities and strategies we employ towards achievement our aims.

What do I need to do to become ILGA-Europe volunteer?

So now you have read about how volunteering works at ILGA-Europe, all you need to do is to fill in our volunteer registration form and send it us (the form is available below). Depending on our needs and skills/locations/time you have identified we will contact you to progress your offer of volunteering with our needs for an extra pair of hands!