Become a volunteer!
Be part of an exciting and rewarding project, meet like-minded people, learn useful and transferable skills and get great satisfaction from helping a nationally important project for wildlife, plants, heritage and people. However you can help, whether it's digging or raking, making tea, counting birds, pond dipping with children, media work in the office or taking photographs. Take at look at the volunteer opportunity page and see how a little time from you can make a world of difference.
Outdoor and Conservation Volunteering
Great Fen Monitors
We have fantastic a team of 60 volunteers engaged in survey and monitoring of the Great Fen, putting a day or two every month. We gather data about plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals.
This work helps us to establish base-line data and monitor changes across the Great Fen and fine-tune habitat management techniques.
As we carry out restoration, the wildlife is responding, and it is a very exciting and satisfying process to be involved in monitoring the progress of this Living Landscape. Both experienced naturalists and those new to survey and monitoring are involved, as training is provided. While we are not recruiting at the moment, do check this page from time to time, or our social media, to see if we have any vacancies on the team.
Outdoor Volunteering
Once a fortnight, out on the fen, getting tired and muddy, but having great fun! It’s a good way to get some fresh air, keep fit and make a difference for local wildlife. These take place in a variety of locations on the Great Fen.
Events, Schools and Community Support
Events and Community Support
There are lots of opportunities to help out at the Wildlife Trust Countryside Centre and in the local community.
Come along and help out with family and community events. These occur all year round and are a great way to encourage people to get involved and enjoy the great outdoors.
We are particularly interested to hear from you if you are available Wednesday or Friday mornings in term time to assist with our pre-school group Little Bugs!
Schools Volunteering
Our education programmes are very popular with children and teachers and we often have up to 50 or 60 children at a time from reception age upwards but mainly Key Stages 1 and 2.
Visits normally run from around 9.30am until 2.30pm and there is some preparation and clearing up time before and after. We would be grateful of any help you could offer with these visits.
We would love some help whenever you may be available; if you would like to come along for just one or two school visits or all of them it would be entirely up to you, we don’t ask for any minimum commitment.
The main thing is to inspire and share a love of nature, heritage and wildlife with the children in a fun and interactive way. And making sure they don’t fall in the pond! So come along for a chat and get involved; it makes a real difference to children’s lives.
"I volunteer for the Great Fen Education team for many reasons. I have always been passionate about the environment and believe that the children should be given every opportunity to enjoy, explore and understand the environment. I also thoroughly enjoy working with so many enthusiastic people at the Great Fen. I go home after each visit smiling because I've had so much fun."
Helen, Great Fen Volunteer.
Volunteer Officers
Volunteer Officers
We offer Volunteer Officer posts for people looking for a career in wildlife conservation, or in outdoor education and community work. These placements are for 6-9 months, usually 3 days a week. We provide training, both formal and informal to give you career experience in the environment sector. We also provide interview training at the end of your placement.
These posts come up once or twice a year. There are no current vacancies for Volunteer Officers but we will update this page if this changes.
"Why do I volunteer? Well, I really do believe in the Great Fen. Clawing back what is still a small but precious area for nature and to restore an ancient habitat is not only good for wildlife but also the local community, now and in the future."
Andrew Cuthbert