Volunteer Center

Schedule

How do I get scheduled to volunteer?  Volunteering with Humanity Road is easy. New Volunteer Orientation training includes instructions on how to schedule for volunteer opportunities and next steps. Our volunteer opportunities are often displayed using Eastern Standard Time.  Use the Time Zone Converter to convert to your timezone.

Are you in college and interested in an internship? Explore the Humanity Road Internship Program.  Current opportunities for interns and active volunteers can be viewed at https://humanityroad.org/volunteer-opportunities/

Volunteer Tasks

What types of tasks do Humanity Road volunteers perform? Humanity Road offers a diverse range of opportunities. Not only do volunteers respond online to support disaster operations, but they also assist with tasks such as blog writing, fund raising, nonprofit administration, and providing medication assistance to those in need. Here is a list of common types of tasks performed by volunteers supporting online disaster operations:

Social Media Incident Commander (SMIC): Leads incident response team, sets response goals, ensures clear lines of authority, schedules meetings with staff and team leads for updates, maintains contact with relevant clients and partner agencies, allocates resources, authorizes information releases

SM Deputy Commander: Assists SMIC in giving overall social media emergency response direction for Humanity Road

Volunteer Coordinator: Manages deployable human resources, schedules training and staffing, provides just-in-time training, assists volunteers with roles and tasks, liaison for volunteers from other organizations, ensures volunteer time is recorded.

Medication Finder: In our mission at Humanity Road, we’ve got a special role that’s close to heart. It’s about getting vital medications from TheFamilyRx.com to those who urgently need them. The person in this role in the Happy family pharmacy builds close relationships with neighborhood pharmacies, listens to pressing medication needs from the community, double-checks that the meds we get are both genuine and safe, and ensures they reach the right hands without delay. They also keep a keen eye on our stock, making sure we’re always ready to help.

Liaison Coordinator: Operates as a bridge between Humanity Road and other response organizations, establishes and maintains relationships during response, leads 3W reporting, confirms and coordinates requests for relationships, updates partners on HR’s response efforts.

Social Media Listener/Responder:  Manages information sharing on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn), replies to questions/requests posted on HR’s social media accounts, listens to social media streams and identifies areas of engagement, composes and posts real-time social media content.

SM Data Miner: Conducts data mining on the Internet and social media for situational awareness information and urgent needs for humans, animals, vulnerable populations, and hospitals; verifies information and sources; adds information to HR situation report if needed; uses special tools for for searching social media if assigned.

Incident Reporting Coordinator: Ensures all reports are filled out appropriately and on-time, provides status report of situation report and identifies missing items, directs reporting assistants, updates SMIC regarding informational needs, assists in collecting incident-relevant operational data, ensures reports and Workbook are filled out, ensures reports are published, sets publication deadlines in absence of SMIC, coordinates After Action Report.

Incident Reporting Assistant: Assists Incident Reporting Coordinator; fills out situtation report, 3W reports, and other reports as necessary; publishes reports on websites as needed; assists with After Action Reporting.

Case Management Coordinator: Tracks, manages, and resolves urgent needs cases; determines needs by contacting individuals/organizations needing help; determines which agencies can help; checks status daily; ensures tracking documents are filled out; briefs team and SMIC on status of cases; ensures confidentiality of all case information.

Technical Specialist: Provides specialized knowledge and expertise for certain types of incidents, such as translating, crowdmapping, GIS mapping, data analytics, marine disaster response, earthquake/tsunami expertise.

Training

What type of  Volunteer Training do we offer? We train our volunteers on specific methods to respond online during disaster. Training includes tools, techniques, processes and technology.  New volunteers are required to complete new volunteer orientation within 30 days.  We conduct training and disaster drills about once a month based on the number of new volunteers needing training.  All training is conducted via Skype conference calls.  To see a more complete list of classes visit our Volunteer Training page. Training classes are often displayed using Eastern Standard Time.

Meetings

All Hands Meeting

Meetings are often displayed using Eastern Standard Time.

  • Prerequisite:  These meetings are for All Humanity Road Volunteers
  • Overview Ongoing monthly All Hands meetings for volunteers of Humanity Road, Inc.  These meetings are open to all Humanity Road volunteers.  Topics discussed include recent events and recent and upcoming training, exercises and collaborations.  Volunteers may join these calls from Skype or on the global conference bridge. Attend

Team Lead Meeting

  • Prerequisite:  These meetings are for Humanity Road Team Leaders
  • Duration:  90 Minutes
  • Overview Team Lead Meeting This is a planning meeting that occurs the third Wednesday of each month for all team leads.

Resources

Visit the following pages for more helpful tips and information on these types of emerging events:

  • Earthquake
  • Solar
  • Volcano
  • Winter
  • Wildfire
  • Situation Reports – Most recent situation reports for emerging events
  • Hashboard – One page view of Tweet Feeds for frequent types of hazards or events

Recognition

We recognize and appreciate the service hours contributed by our volunteers and applaud their service and commitment.  Humanity Road has developed a special campaign to recognize individuals based on peer as well as performance contributions, such as level of engagement. Learn more about the Humanity Road Choice Awards.

Code of Conduct

Humanity Road, Inc. is committed to encouraging a working environment that promotes humanitarian action and a work ethic free from harassment and discrimination. Activities that discriminate based upon an individual’s sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion or any other legally protected characteristics are prohibited. All volunteers and staff are required to abide by this policy.  See the full Code of Conduct.