Irish Aid Center

About Volunteering

The Centre provides information on all forms of volunteering opportunities available to anyone who wants to get involved and support development activities. An interactive Introduction to Volunteering has been designed by Irish Aid and is available on the website and in the centre.

The Irish Aid website acts as a guide to volunteering, allowing the individual to review all the options available to them - short term, long term, online volunteering or volunteering in Ireland in support of overseas development. This website also helps individuals to start thinking about volunteering, to look at the various options, question why they want to volunteer and what do they want to get out of their assignment.

Staff in the Irish Aid Centre are available to show visitors the programme and to answer any queries. More formal interviews may be arranged by appointment. Interviews for Irish Aid funded positions with the United Nations Volunteers, internships, the Rapid Response Corps, UN Special Operations Missions, and election observation mission briefings also take place in the Centre. Regular talks and events on overseas volunteering take place on Thursday evenings at 6.30pm. For further information see our Events Calander.

Remember, not every volunteer experience works out as expected! The Irish volunteering NGOs have developed a Code of Good Practice which promotes best practice for sending agencies. The code requires agencies to ensure that volunteers are fully informed about their assignment, cultural, health and safety issues and aware of their responsibilities. Anyone interested in volunteering overseas is encouraged to consult the list of NGOs signed up to the code and the Code of Good Practice on the Comhlámh www.volunteeringoptions.org website. Irish Aid provides support for this website.