Volunteering opportunities for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Translated resources for volunteering

The Volunteer Centre Sheffield Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project has produced the following translated information. This is aimed at promoting good practice in volunteering with refugees and asylum seekers. We hope that these resources will help mainstream organisations involve refugee and asylum seeker volunteers, although they will be useful for all organisations who work with volunteers who have English as a second language.

We have found these guides to be very useful when trying to explain what volunteering is. Even where people have good English, being able to go through the information in their first language means that people fully understand the information. The same is true of the appointment letters. When making appointments over the phone, people can easily get confused over the actual arrangements. We post out a translated pro-forma letter with the address, date and time completed by staff and this ensures that people are clear about when and where their appointment is.

There are 3 sections:

  • General guides explaining what volunteering is
  • Letters to help organisations contact volunteers
  • Monitoring resources such as feedback forms, confidentiality statements and data protection forms.

  1. General guides explaining what volunteering is.

    • Volunteering Flyer

      This flyer is designed to be used with the volunteering guide below. This is basic information about what volunteering is and about the service we provide to refugees and asylum seekers (it is translated information from our homepage). We can post copies to you or you can download a high resolution (large file size) pdf here in:

      English, Arabic, Farsi, French, Kurdish, Somali, Amharic, Tigrinya and Urdu.

    • Guide to Volunteering for Refugees and Asylum Seekers

      This is a guide for asylum seekers and refugees. It gives some basic information about how to chose an opportunity and guidance on some rights, responsibilities and expectations for both the volunteer and the organisation. It also has a section explaining what a CRB / Police check is which can help to alleviate fears of asylum seeker volunteers.

      Available in: English, Amharic, Arabic, Farsi, French, Kurdish (Sorani), Somali, Tigrinya and Urdu.

  2. Volunteering Letters

  3. Monitoring Resources

    • Volunteer Feedback forms

      These are translated adaptations of the feedback forms in the Volunteer Impact Assessment Toolkit developed by the Institute for Volunteer Research. This is the ‘core questionnaire’ to find out what people volunteering for your organisation think of their volunteering experience.

      The majority of the questions have tick answers so although the questionnaire is in e.g. Farsi, you will still be able to use the results if you only read English as know that for example: the answer for question 1 was ‘B’.

      Available in English (MS Word or pdf) and Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, French, Kurdish (Sorani), Somali, Tigrignya and Urdu.

    • Personal information consent forms (Data Protection forms)

      These are generic forms asking service users to consent to your organisation holding their personal information. There are two versions. The first is for volunteer co-ordinators at intermediary bodies (like our project) who might pass volunteers details on to other volunteering organisations. The second is a general consent form.

      Volunteer co-ordinator / intermediary service.

      Available in English (MS Word or pdf) and Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, French, Kurdish (Sorani), Somali, Tigrignya and Urdu.

    • General consent form>

      Available in English (MS Word or pdf) and Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, French, Kurdish (Sorani), Somali, Tigrignya and Urdu.

    • Volunteer Confidentiality Declaration / Statement

      This translated volunteer confidentiality declaration is designed to be used as a part of an organisations volunteer induction where volunteers are dealing with personal, sensitive or confidential information.

      Volunteer Confidentiality Declaration / Statement – English