Volunteer

Your Life Counts needs community participation to thrive so that youth and families can make it through the toughest times. We invite you to team up with us as we welcome all kinds of volunteer involvement with YLC. It’s so important to work together and move toward our goal of reaching as many youth and families as possible with our positive message of help and hope. We can only do this with support from caring people, like you.

Here’s some examples of how can you help. We need:

• Trained social workers, nurses, counselors and other caring professionals who can give a few hours of their time each week to help support our online lifeline and advise us on key areas of YLC operations – please note that our online lifeline is not facilitated by untrained people – if you would like to be considered as a facilitator for the online lifeline please complete the volunteer application below
• Help with fundraising – Introduction to potential financial corporate sponsors and other supporters
• New articles for the YLC website. We’re continually updating our database of knowledge & information
• Ideas and advice
• Original artwork and graphic designs for our website
• Special expertise in web design and technology is welcomed
• Introducing the YLC strategy to your local school, community or leadership groups
• Community peer mentors for vulnerable young people who need a listening ear and encouragement
• Volunteers in the community for special events and other initiatives
• We are always open to suggestions so if you have an idea for an involvement whether you want to climb Mount Kilmanjaro or hike to the North Pole – we want to hear from you!

We take volunteers and community support very seriously. We set high standards of conduct, professionalism and care and we do expect our volunteers to work at no lesser a standard than if the job were paid. We’re very grateful to every one of our volunteers as we seek to give our very best service in the work that we do. It is a very precious responsibility and we do not take it lightly.

Our community volunteers take our message into schools, special events and fundraisers while our ‘virtual’ volunteers work at the technical level and carry the YLC vision and mission into the virtual Internet community. Both our community and ‘virtual’ volunteers are integral to the outreach of YLC to support youth and families around the world.

Our volunteer application process has 5 stages:

1. Complete and return a volunteer application.
2. Complete and return a confidentiality agreement.
3. Telephone or in person interview.
4. Apply for a vulnerable sector Police clearance certificate at your local Police station. We will email you a letter of request that will need to be signed by you and taken with you to your Police station. Please also note that there is usually a fee charged by the Police for this certificate – usually between $20 and $30 – the cost for which would need to be covered by you, the applicant.
5. Provide 3 referees each of whom would be required to provide a written reference for you (the reference form is included in the application form).