Volunteering
Thank you for your interest in volunteering at Rape Crisis. There are several ways in which you could become involved. We run annual training courses for volunteers wanting to work directly with clients either as lay counsellors, as community educators, community activists or as court supporters. If you wish to involve yourself in any one of these areas you would need to complete our volunteer training programme which consists of the following elements:
- a six week training programme
- one month’s orientation
- five months practical training
Once you have completed these elements you become a member of Rape Crisis and get a certificate. We ask potential volunteers to offer us a time commitment of a minimum of eight hours per month (this does not include a three hour monthly meeting held with all volunteers in particular focus groups) for a period of one year.
Overseas volunteers however, are often not available for a full year and assist us for much shorter periods. These volunteers usually do very practical chores for the organisation which do not involve specialised skills. They might help us paint a room, do Internet searches for potential donors, or do data capture, entering cases into our computer system, or other filing or clerical work. In return we offer them opportunities to shadow certain staff members on the job.
The only other category of volunteer at this stage are people with particular expertise who render a service to the organisation by donating their time in areas where we don’t have the skills in house. For example we have had layout artists design booklets for us, a human resources expert assist with our performance appraisal process, a researcher create a statistics report, a marketing expert help with new sponsorship ideas, a website designer review our website and so on.
We operate from three separate offices in Cape Town and depending on your location you may wish to contact one of the following:
Observatory (021) 447-9762
Athlone (021) 633-9228
Khayelitsha (021) 361-9085
A representative will then take down your details and send you an application form to join Rape Crisis.
It is important to note that even if you already have skills in one of our focus areas, should you wish to volunteer formally with us and become a member,you would need to do the training course. The reasons for this are; it gives you an opportunity to bond with the other volunteers in your team both new and experienced, you become part of the organisational culture of Rape Crisis through this experience and it provides an orientation to the specialised field of rape in South Africa. Our courses are workshop styled experiential learning environments. Everyone pools their skills, knowledge and life experience in order to help one another learn and grow. Your expertise, as it is shared with others, starts being helpful right from the word go. If you want to find out more please e-mail Nazma Hendricks at nazma@rapecrisis.org.za. I look forward to hearing from you!