Volunteer

‘Volunteering has been life changing.’ 

We are confident you will enjoy being part of our team of friendly, enthusiastic volunteers – in a recent survey 100% of volunteers felt that their training helped them carry out their role and 94% felt supported in their role by Learn to Love to Read. 93% of volunteers felt their work made a difference to the children and 100% would recommend volunteering with Learn to Love to Read to others. 

We are able to offer volunteers the chance to either volunteer in school or virtually (or both). In-school volunteering always takes places during the school day, usually in the afternoons. Online support will usually happen after the end of the school day. The virtual commitment is 60 minutes and the in-school commitment is for 90 minutes once a week during school term. 

To ensure volunteers build a good relationship with the children, we ask you to commit to volunteering for at least one full school year

Our volunteers work one-to-one with pupils aged 5 to 8 years to support and encourage their reading. Volunteers do not need teaching experience but do need to be reliable, patient, flexible, enthusiastic, good with children and confident in written and spoken English.

Please note we only work with schools in the London borough of Wandsworth and all our volunteers need to live in or within easy reach of that borough. 

APPLICATION PROCESS

If you have decided to volunteer with us, you will need to complete the online application form below. Once this has been completed, we will contact you to arrange a face-to-face interview with two members of L2L2R staff.

We believe that children should never experience abuse of any kind. We have a responsibility to promote the welfare of all children and keep them safe, and we are committed to practise in a way that protects them. We require all our volunteers to share this commitment. You can read our safeguarding policy here.

SAFER RECRUITMENT

There will be questions about safeguarding in the interview and we will carry out an enhanced DBS check (criminal record check) for all successful applicants. Any applicant who has lived overseas for more than three months since the age of 16 will also usually be required to obtain an overseas police check in line with the Local Authority's guidance. We will provide advice and support for this process but you will need to apply and obtain this yourself. Successful applicants will receive full safeguarding training and be required to confirm they have read and understood various safeguarding documents, including our own safeguarding policy.

REFERENCES

All applicants are required to provide two references. You must provide the name, email and contact telephone number for each referee so we can contact them.

• If you are a parent wishing to volunteer in your child's school, please provide details of one teacher at the school, plus a personal referee who has known you for at least two years.
• If you are a student volunteer, please provide details of one academic referee from your university and one personal referee who has known you for at least two years.
• If you have previously worked or volunteered with children, please provide details of a referee from your most recent setting and a professional email address, i.e. not a hotmail/gmail address, and one personal referee who has known you for at least two years.
• All other applicants should provide two referees who have known you for at least two years, one of which should be from someone who has worked with you in a professional/voluntary capacity with a professional email address, i.e. not a hotmail/gmail address.
• Referees must not be related to you or in a personal relationship with you.
• We understand that it may be difficult for all applicants to meet some of these reference guidelines and we do not want this to be a barrier to applying. If you are unable to find referees that meet the guidelines, please get in touch with our Head of Operations ([email protected]) to discuss further.

Learn to Love to Read is committed to working without bias and offering equal opportunities for our volunteers. We are committed to valuing diversity and working inclusively across all our activities. Our aim is that everyone is treated with dignity and respect. 

‘L2L2R volunteers are such a friendly and warm-hearted group of people - it is always a pleasure to arrive at school to see them! The children all have such individual characters and it is lovely to see them grow in confidence and enjoy reading.’