Working at EcoWeeks

Ethos. As we hope you will have picked up from this website, EcoWeeks are extremely community orientated. We expect everyone to take responsibility for making the holidays work socially. That means we trust the children who attend with a lot of responsibility: adult staff are there to suggest, guide and inspire, not to give orders or dominate. This doesn't mean chaos and anarchy, it means a nice, relaxed week where everyone treats everyone else with respect and friendliness.

Pay. None. Not a penny. Nothing. This is partly pragmatic (if we paid anything we'd have to pay the minimum wage and that would make the weeks horribly expensive) but mainly idealistic - we want people to believe in our work and enjoy doing it rather than people who need to earn money. However, we don't want volunteers to be out-of-pocket, so we will try to help with expenses involved in working for us, including travel to and from the centre. We ask for a contribution of £100 (to cover training costs and board and lodging during the week) as a first time volunteer and you will be expected to attend a staff training weekend prior to the EcoWeek. Returning volunteers will get to return for free! In case of real difficulty we may be able to help with other costs, perhaps by making a contribution towards a new pair of walking boots, for example.

Training. You don't need previous experience of working with children to be an EcoWeek volunteer, but we want all the volunteers who work with us to be properly trained. We therefore run a staff preparation weekend at the start of each summer to allow new volunteers to learn more about us, what we do and how we do it.

Duke of Edinburgh's Award. Working at an EcoWeek counts as the residential component for the Gold Award, and we'll be happy to sign your book at the end of the week! Again, the £100 contribution and training are required for this as a first time volunteer.

There are two things to do, and which ever order suits you best:

Get in touch. Tell us about yourself, what interests you, when you're available, why you're interested and so on and we'll discuss what opportunities there are.

Fill in a form. Download an application form, fill it in and send it to us. If you have problems printing it, we can send you a paper copy instead - just ask. We ask for details about you and also for the names of two referees. We will take up these references!

If you want to know more, or if you have any questions at all, please contact us for a chat.