Have you ever considered giving back and helping to inspire others with your research? In this post we’ll cover off why this can be a great thing to take on and outline some of the STEM volunteering opportunities currently available in the UK.
If you’re based in another country I’m sure you’ll be able to find similar opportunities. If not, you could consider starting up such a scheme!
Firstly, for anyone who doesn’t know, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering , Maths (or Math!). STEM volunteering therefore involves helping to educate children or young adults about any of these fields.
Before we delve into the opportunities we’ll cover some of the reasons why you should consider volunteering. Already made you mind up that you’re keen to volunteer? Click here to skip straight to the different STEM volunteering opportunities.
Why Should I Volunteer?
Societal Benefits
Volunteering your time provides a great opportunity to give back to your community. For instance, you could help to:
- Inspire someone to go on to consider a career in a similar field
- Provide knowledge and teach skills which could help someone in later life
- Highlight the importance of publicly funded STEM research
- Give a child renewed confidence to pursue their passion
- Simply provide a few minutes of entertainment, such as if you’re volunteering at a public event!
It’s a chance to make a real-world difference and it can be particularly impactful if you are female, disabled, LGBTQ+ or BAME. These groups are all under-represented in STEM and by being a visible role model you can help to show children that STEM careers are for everyone.
Personal Benefits
Volunteering isn’t just good for society, it can also be great for you too!
It’s been widely reported that giving back makes you feel more fulfilled by giving you purpose and meaning. Having a purpose is also one of the key factors identified with people living longer, so it could even help to extend your lifespan.
STEM volunteering also looks great on your CV. If you’re applying for a PhD, any STEM volunteering activities will really help your application and boost your chances of success. That’s why I mention them in my guide to securing a fully-funded PhD scholarship.
Volunteering experience may also come in helpful when applying for teaching or supervisory positions as you’ll be able to demonstrate that you can distill complex topics into something easier to understand. Also, more and more grants (the money that typically pay for research) expect some kind of public engagement or outreach activities to occur during the project, so you’re off to a great start if you’re already participating in similar actives.
I personally found volunteering during my PhD to be a great way to gain experience working in a team and to raise my confidence in talking to the public.
Finally, volunteering can be a great way to make new connections. I often find that those who go out of their way to volunteer are particularly motivated and proactive about their careers. These can be great people to connect with over a shared mutual interest in helping others.
Hopefully you’re now keen to give STEM volunteering a go, so next we’ll delve into some of the opportunities available in the UK.
STEM Volunteering Opportunities in the UK
Whether you’re interested in a one-off activity, on are keen to sign up for an ongoing commitment, there are lots of ways to get involved in volunteering.
Below are some of the STEM volunteering opportunities currently available in the UK.
University-Specific Opportunities
If you’re currently part of a university and are interested in volunteering, I suggest exploring what is available at your university.
During my PhD I took part in a number of different volunteering opportunities:
- Free tutoring for school students (Pimlico Connection). I helped at a local state school for a few hours once per week for about half a year.
- Quite a few one-off public engagement events such as the Great Exhibition Road Festival and some Royal Society’s Summer Science events:
Don’t worry if you’re not part of a university, there are lots of other STEM volunteering opportunities available to everyone and we’ll cover these next.
Stemnet STEM Ambassador Programme
Stemnet’s STEM Ambassador programme is a government funded scheme supported by UK Research and Innovation (who fund most PhDs). They help to connect volunteers with schools, colleges and communities who have requested assistance with particular STEM topics.
Examples of the types of volunteering include:
- Speaking to students about your career
- Bringing a subject to life through a workshop
- Supporting a STEM club
Stemnet also have a supportive community portal available online. The portal lists different events you can get involved with and you can request help with your own activities. Stemnet also provide online training and guidance to support volunteers.
My partner was a STEM Ambassador a few years ago and found Stement to be extremely flexible in terms of what involvement they require from their ambassadors. They only require volunteers to do around one event per year in order to retain their status. It could therefore be the perfect way to dip your toe into volunteering and see how you get on.
It’s worth being aware that you will need to complete a DBS/ PVG check, but this is fully paid for by Stemnet themselves. You just send off a few details and they do a quick check of your criminal record to make sure that you’re ok to work with children.
I’m a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!
While I was working as a postdoc at the University of Bath I received an e-mail about science volunteering opportunities with I’m a Scientist and I got in contact to register my interest.
I’m a Scientist provide a way for school students to connect with researchers working in STEM through text-only live chats. It’s essentially a quick-fire Q&A session for around an hour at a time. Questions are being asked to all the participating scientists at the same time.
Students do receive a bio about you in advance so you may well find that some of the discussion won’t be solely about your research, a fair few questions were asked about my tortoise!
Every four weeks there is a different ‘zone’ of focus and you’ll be aligned to one which fits with what your work relates to. I was selected to be part of the Futures zone.
I found the sessions to be very flexible. Once you’ve been assigned to a zone you’re given a list of session times over a four week period and you select which ones you’d be interested in taking part in. Each week they announce a Scientist of the week (voted for by the students) and there is a prize for the overall winner.
I was very surprised to be awarded one of the scientist of the week awards but sadly missed out on the overall prize.
This is a fully virtual event with no audio or video required. Therefore it’s a great way to get into volunteering if you’re feeling nervous about something more involved. It will also help to improve your communication skills: it can be tough to quickly summarise your research for children!
You can apply online here and it only takes a couple of minutes. There is no ongoing commitment beyond the four weeks.
I’m an Engineer
I’m an Engineer is run by the same people as I’m a Scientist and as you’d imagine from the name it’s targeted at engineers.
It follows a similar format to I’m a Scientist and you can apply to take part here.
Stemettes
My partner has recently volunteered with Stemettes. Stemettes are a social enterprise working to support girls, women and non-binary people in both STEM and STEAM careers. The A stands for Arts in case you were wondering!
Stemettes support those aged 5 to 25, aiming to show them that careers in these areas are for everyone.
There are a range of different roles you can register interest in as a volunteer. Stemettes helpfully list expected time commitments and an overview of what could be involved on their volunteering page.
Different volunteering opportunities include:
- Being a mentor
- Helping out with core skills events (such as CV reviews, mock interviews, speed networking)
- Teaching technical skills
- Creating content for the Stemettes site
- Helping the marketing team to spread awareness of Stemettes events
As with Stemnet, the commitment is very flexible and you can pick and choose events as and when they come up. They also have a range of virtual volunteering opportunities.
My partner recently helped out with an hour long virtual speed networking session. She spoke to several groups of children about her career in IT and it was really well organised, with lots of support available from the Stemettes staff.
The Access Project
The Access Project aims to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds go to prestigious universities.
Volunteers provide online tutoring to a student aged between 14-18 for one hour per week in term time, with additional preparation work required ahead of the tutorial. Depending on the student’s age the tutoring will either be at GCSE or A Level. Sessions can be flexibly arranged around any holidays.
Connection is via an online platform, with training provided to ensure you feel comfortable with how to use it. You will also need to complete a Safeguarding Children course before starting and complete a free DBS check.
Providing this support is a great way to help level the playing field and boost someone’s chances of achieving their goals.
You can find out more about becoming a volunteer with The Access Project here.
BeScience STEM
BeScience STEM deliver programmes to help make STEM education more engaging. They have an ambitious goal of exposing 1 million young people to STEM by 2025.
You can learn more about the story of how the company came about from the TEDx talk of their founder below.
BeScience STEM hold both virtual and in person STEM events. They offer training sessions throughout the year and are flexible in terms of how much time commitment is required, with some volunteers doing a single hour per week.
Some of their science volunteering opportunities include:
- Events manager
- Admin team
- Social media team
- Blog and newsletter editor
- Technical support
You can find out more about volunteering here.
Engineering UK
Engineering UK have a range of activities they run to inspire young people to get involved in STEM. I’d suggest checking out their homepage and volunteering page to find out what volunteering opportunities are currently live.
As of the time of writing (March 2023) volunteers are currently being sought for both the Big Bang Competition and the Big Bang Fair.
Below is a brief overview of what these volunteering roles involve and you can find out further details here. It’s important to highlight that you do not need to be an engineer to apply, they are looking for anyone who works within STEM.
The Big Bang Competition
Volunteering to assist with the Big Bang Competition involves acting as an online judge. You’ll review and assess projects, then provide feedback to the entrants to help them enhance their ideas further.
As this takes place online there’s no requirement to travel to a specific location. It’s a one-off volunteering commitment which requires up to 8 hours across a two week period.
The Big Bang Fair
The Big Bang Fair is the biggest STEM event for young people in the UK. Over 30,000 young people are expected to be in attendance!
Their science volunteering opportunities range from helping to run activities and workshops, to speaking to students about what your career path has looked like.
Volunteering with the Big Bang Fair requires a time commitment of at least one day at the event in Birmingham (in addition to a 1hr briefing in advance).
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers have a range of STEM volunteering opportunities. You can find the full list here.
The majority of these are for those based in the UK but there are also a few which are worldwide.
Example volunteering opportunities:
- Primary school engineer volunteer
- Formula volunteer – help to run their motorsport competition for students
- Royal Institution engineering masterclass speaker
- National engineering competition for girls mentor
- Tomorrow’s engineer volunteer
Code First Girls
If you have a passion for coding, then Code First Girls may be right up your street. They provide online courses to help women get into coding and they’re the largest provider of these free courses in the UK.
Their mission is to reduce the gender diversity gap in tech and there are several ways you could get involved:
Code First Girls Ambassador
If you’d like you volunteer with Code First Girls then you may be interested in becoming a Code First Girls Ambassador. You can get involved with helping to host courses, assisting with social media, building the community network and assisting with events.
This is a 12 month commitment with around 50 hours of effort expected excluding any paid opportunities. At the end you’ll receive a reference letter from their CEO and a certificate to acknowledge your contribution.
As of the time of writing applications are currently closed but they will be opening them up again in the summer.
Code First Girls Instructor (Paid Opportunity)
For those who have coding experience and are keen to get even more involved you may also want to look into becoming a Code First Girls Instructor.
This isn’t strictly volunteering as it’s a paid role but I wanted to include it as it’s still a great way to help promote diversity in STEM.
Anybody who has coding experience can apply as they welcome instructors from all gender identities. All courses are virtual so you can be based anywhere in the UK.
You can see the expected time commitments below.
They have a free training academy (for those with no prior coaching/teaching experience). There’s also a clear instructor pathway for how you can progress as an instructor over time.
Each progression comes with an increase in responsibility and an increase in pay. Rates are as of the the time of writing (March 2023) are:
- Trainee Instructor – £15 per hour
- Assistant Instructor – £30 per hour
- Lead Instructor – £50 per hour
This could be a great way to earn some extra money and also help share your coding skills!
STEM Volunteering Opportunities Summary
Before we finish up here is quick reminder of what we’ve covered in this post.
- STEM volunteering can make a real-world difference and give you the chance to act as a role model and inspire the next generation
- STEM volunteering can also help you to give you purpose, boost your CV and enable you to make connections in a low pressure environment
- There are a range of STEM volunteering opportunities available in the UK which suit varying levels of commitment
I’d strongly encourage you to give STEM volunteering a go, even as a one-off to see how you get on.
When I did the first ‘Ask a Scientist’ session I can’t deny that I was nervous, but as soon as I got underway those nerves vanished. Once I’d finished I felt a huge sense of achievement and motivation to do it again.
Volunteering really does provide a huge endorphin boost and I love the idea that my input could lead someone to consider a career path they weren’t previously aware of.
STEM volunteering is a win-win for everyone involved, so pick an opportunity that works for you and let me know how you get on!
Are you tempted to give STEM volunteering a go? Do you know of any other science volunteering opportunities which aren’t currently on my list? Let me know in the comments!
