Volunteering
Becoming a Volunteer
Introduction
Brinsley Animal Rescue is a Registered Charity run entirely by volunteers. The Charity is run on vegan values, therefore we do not believe in exploiting animals for food, profit or entertainment.
We have no paid staff and our premises, land, buildings, utilities, vehicles and fuel are donated to the Charity free of charge. Therefore all of the money raised goes directly into helping animals by paying for food, bedding, treatment and vets bills.
The Charity rescues pets, wild animals and farm animals, our aim is to re-home pets and farm animals into life-long homes and release wild animals back into the wild. Where we cannot re-home pets and farm animals, we provide them with permanent sanctuary, we never euthanase a healthy animal
What are we looking for in a Volunteer?
Before you consider volunteering, please think about the following;
Long-Term Volunteering- As we have a large range of animals, it takes a lot of time and effort on our part to train new volunteers, to meet a standard where they can be trusted to care for the animals without further supervision. As we have limited time, we can only train so many new volunteers at any one time. We therefore cannot offer volunteer places to persons who want to volunteer for short periods, such as DOE Awards or work experience. We need volunteers who will become experienced, trustworthy and who regularly volunteer.
Hard Work – We are not a zoo or fun farm, we do want our volunteers to enjoy themselves but please remember it is hard work, which has to be done 365 days a year, no matter what the weather. The work is physically demanding and can involve manual handling and lifting.
Supervision –During your first volunteering days, for your safety and that of the animals, you will be closely supervised. However as all of our volunteers have limited time to supervise and train other volunteers, once trained you will generally volunteer unsupervised.
Reliability - If you say that you are coming, please do, it can be very difficult planning the daily tasks if people do not turn up.
Age – As well as the animals safety, there are hazards at the sanctuary so unfortunately we cannot offer volunteer places at the sanctuary to anyone below the age of 16.
What Do I need?
Experience
We are not specifically looking for people with experience of handling or caring for animals, but you do need to be comfortable around them, small, wild and very large.
We need people who are not put off by hard work, who are enthusiastic and reliable.
Clothing
You need to come dressed appropriate for the weather and the likely tasks, generally you will get dirty, so bring your scruffs, wellington boots and water proofs.
Volunteers Tasks
Animal Welfare
Each and every day there are dozens of cages to clean out and over a hundred animals to feed, water and check over. This includes wildlife, small pets, chickens as well as the large farm animals.
We also like to spend time with our animals to enrich their lives, assess their personalities to prepare them for rehoming and to tame them.
There are stables to muck out, fields containing horses, cattle, pigs and goats to poo pick.
Home Checker
We check every potential new home, many animals come to us because the previous owners have not cared for them or considered the consequences of taking on the responsibility of looking after an animal, we don’t want our animals to end up like this.
We need people to carry out simple checks in local area before we re-home an animal; part of this service is to offer new pet owners good advice. For this you need to be experienced in caring for the particular type of animal your home checking for.
Wildlife Carers
Sometimes, particularly at spring time, we get inundated with baby animals, competent help in this area is always welcomed. To care for wildlife though you need to be very experienced. We can offer this training, but only to our experienced and regular volunteers.
Project Work
As we are still very much developing the rescue centre, there are always plenty of chores from erecting fencing to repairing cages. So if you have a particular trade, we might have a project for you.
Fund Raiser
We need over £15,000 a year to carry on the vital work we do, without the funds we can do nothing. We mainly need organized persons who can go off and carryout fundraising events for us.
Application Form
If you can offer help, please do download Click Here and fill out the application form and return to by post or email;
Brinsley Animal Rescue
69 Hobsic Close
Brinsley
Nottingham
NG16 5AX