Help From Home

Help >From Home is a volunteering portal that was set up in January 2009 and focuses on positive actions that can be performed from a person's own home and in their own time.

Criteria for volunteering opportunities
The criteria for a volunteering opportunity to be included in the website is that it must be


 * easy and simple to complete
 * it must not impose a commitment from a volunteer, ie a volunteer can dip in and dip out whenever s/he wants to
 * it must not take more than 30 minutes to accomplish in one session
 * the vast majority of the action can be performed from a person's own home or garden

Choose positive actions
There are 3 categories of positive actions to choose from, these being 'Charity', 'Green' and 'Advocacy'. Each example of a voluntary action is described in brief detail, along with a rough estimate of the time it would take to complete. Where appropriate, it then provides links to other websites that run similar schemes as well as the impact that action would have.

'Do Good' cards
Help From Home also runs two other initiatives. One of these is to spread random acts of kindness via it's 'Do Good' cards scheme. Each card has suggestions for three simple volunteering actions printed on it. They're intended to be handed out to friends or family or just left in a random public place in an effort to encourage others to perform good deeds.

Volunteer Challenge
Another initiative that Help >From Home runs is the 'Volunteer Challenge'.The idea revolves around a participant performing a defined number of volunteer actions, which once completed will be rewarded with a 'Certificate of Achievement'.

Background
Help From Home was set up in January 2009 with the sole purpose of encouraging and inspiring people to volunteer their time from the comfort of their own home for the benefit of worthy causes. It provides free information on easy, no commitment volunteering opportunities that will either cost nothing or very little to complete and take no more than 30 minutes to accomplish. Some can even be performed in under 10 seconds without even getting out of your favourite chair or pyjamas!

It all started a few years ago when, Mike Bright, the person who runs Help From Home, realised that he wanted to maximise his time for the benefit of worthy causes. That's when he began to find ways to incorporate volunteering into his life at home. He began by writing to ternminally ill children and visiting click-to-donate websites, but he still wanted to do more. Over time he realised there were plenty of opportunities out there, but they were scattered all over the web and were just simply not included on any volunteer portal sites.

“That's when it sort of hit me”, he says of the time when Help From Home became an idea in his mind. “Why wasn't there a website that collated all of these opportunities together to make it easy for people to volunteer their time?”. Today there over 450 opportunities on the website where a person doesn't even have to leave their house to do a good deed.

“The variety of opportunities out there is quite bewildering”. A cursory glance over the website will prove that he's not wrong. For instance, you can feed a starving person for free with a simple click of the mouse, install free software to help fight cancer with your pc, as well as saving the rainforests just by using a search engine.

With more people than ever before at home either bored, retired or unemployed, the Help From Home website provides these potential volunteers the opportunity to make a difference. “A good deed really is just a mouse click away”, says Mike Bright.

So, if you have a few minutes to spare or are just bored of watching the telly, consider some of the things you could do to help others whilist you're in the comfort of your own home.