Volunteer & Assist

Volunteer

We are always looking for support in running OMPowerment operations.

If you prefer to support us remotely, we are always in need of dedicated supporters to help us fundraise and spread awareness of our work. In addition, we need people with the time and resources to help us with: translation, social media and marketing, financial modeling, and content editing. Get in touch with us if you wish to help in any of those capacities.

If you prefer to get involved with our programming, we allow volunteers to assist on our trainings worldwide. Note that at the moment, we are prioritizing volunteers who wish to certify as future facilitators, to help us spread this work to more communities around the world.

Two ways to volunteer

We accept volunteer facilitators via two, different engagement streams:

• Contact us with an idea for a specific program / connections to a community that you have identified as potentially wanting and/or needing this work**

• Join a planned training. Add your name to a waitlist and we will contact you when we have a need for an assistant to see if you are available

While we were established to support refugee communities, we believe that this work is powerful for all. If there is a community you want to work with that does not classify as a refugee community, that’s ok! In the past, we have supported local (non-refugee) populations affected by gender-based violence include female genital mutilation. At the moment, we are speaking to people who want to offer this training to marginalized young mothers, genocide survivors, the incarcerated, survivors of sex trafficking, and more! There is no need to limit yourself.

Furthermore, we have found a two-week training model that focuses for one week on refugee populations and for one week on local nation marginalized populations to be very effective in some countries as it can aid in improving host community buy-in. We have run the two-week model in Kenya. For the first week, we worked with refugees and for the second week, we worked with marginalized Kenyan female survivors of gender-based violence. We are exploring this option in Colombia as well.

We currently have volunteers for all planned, upcoming trainings. Contact us if you would like to be added to a list of volunteers for consideration on future projects or if you would like to offer a collaborative program.

More information on assisting can be found below.

** Note that we can not guarantee capacity to collaborate on any programming ideas until at least 50% of the finding needed has been secured and a plan for fundraising for the remaining 50% has been discussed with our team **

Tips on Fundraising

Past experience has shown that most donations come from individual asks (i.e. emailing friends and family). Facebook fundraisers also tend to work quite well and can reach a large audience. Further, you can create a fundraising page on JustGiving, connected to our organisation page. An approach that includes all of these options may be the easiest way to reach your goal. Remember that it is often easiest to begin with small goals, like £500, and build from there. When using platforms such as Facebook and JustGiving, engagement with the ongoing campaign often helps - for example, post notes every few days to let donors know where you stand, such as “thanks to the first 10 people who have donated £300….we only need 10 more to donate £20 each - the cost of one drop-in yoga class - to hit our initial goal!”

** Note that if for some reason you are not able to make your personal fundraising goal, the money that is donated will be held to support future programming but, we can not guarantee that you will be able to join the training you initially intended to. We do believe, however, that everyone has the capacity to raise enough to qualify for their intended programming trip.

ARE THERE ANY REQUIREMENTS TO ASSIST IN A NON-TEACHING CAPACITY?

All we require is that you be passionate about our work, emotionally stable and resilient, proactive yet flexible, and, of course, a generally warm and compassionate individual that we would enjoy traveling with.

Before traveling, we will ask that you complete OMPowered Facilitation for Trauma and Transformation online or in-person. The training will cover: an overview OMPowerment and our methodology; benefits of yoga for trauma; modifications for trauma informed yoga; and sensitivities and precautions for using yoga to work with trauma/PTSD. Register here.