Volunteer with APIRG!
Thank you so much for your interest in volunteering with APIRG! We’d love to have you join us at an upcoming volunteer orientation to get oriented to all things APIRG!
Upcoming Volunteer Orientation Dates:
Thursday, Sept 12
3PM – 5PM
Online via Zoom
Thursday, Sept 19
3PM – 5PM
Online via Zoom
Can’t make this volunteer orientation? Sign up to be notified for future volunteer Orientation sessions here!
Volunteer Perks
- Training & Ongoing Education. To support your work as an APIRG volunteer, we seek out trainings on specialised topics (by request)! For example: Workshops on Content Creation, Meme-Making, How to Start a Bookclub, and more!
- References! We’re happy to provide you with a reference letter for future volunteer, employment, or academic opportunities!
- Be a part of a great community! Meet like-minded students and community members and work together to make an impact on our campus community!
- Free Food: Snacks at monthly in-person volunteer meetings
- Read all about it! Be the first to access new-to-our-library books!
- APIRG Merch! Be the first to access exclusive APIRG merch, hot off the presses!
Volunteer Time Commitment
2+ hours per month. Our volunteer team will meet once a month to touch base about ongoing projects and events. From there each volunteer area may meet or undertake tasks and volunteer shifts on an ongoing basis depending on volunteer availability!
Volunteer Expectations
APIRG is a student-funded, student-led organisation dedicated to research, education, and social activism in the public interest. We centre anti-oppression in the work we do as an organisation and through practices and policies, we seek to actively identify, challenge and address oppression wherever it exists, in all its various forms, and to actively encourage opportunities for social awareness and change. Further, we recognize and respect that systems of oppression interact in different ways and affect each person differently.
We ask that you step into this volunteer role with a willingness to learn about yourself and the world around you and be open to new ideas and ways of thinking about the world through an anti-oppressive lens.
Volunteer Roles
Outreach
APIRG’s Outreach volunteer team involves three areas: Outreach Team, Postering Team, and Coffee Hour Team.
Outreach Team
The APIRG Outreach Team supports with getting the word out to the student community about upcoming events, projects, and opportunities at APIRG. Everything from communicating grant deadlines, promoting events like AWOL, our back to school event series, and volunteer opportunities with APIRG and with APIRG Working Groups.
Postering Team
The APIRG Postering Team helps us put up posters across campus! That’s it! Easy-peasy! We’ll provide a list of locations to tackle and some brief postering guidelines and from there you’re good to rock!
Coffee Hour Team
APIRG Coffee Hours happen a few times a semester throughout the school year! We host Coffee Hour at our office at 9111 HUB Mall!
Coffee Hour is an event that we host as an APIRG Office open house for students and community members to drop by, explore our office, check out our library, and meet like-minded people in the APIRG Community! We usually have a prize raffle at Coffee Hour for all attendees and a small info table to share information about us!
Library
The APIRG office hosts a small but mighty library of titles on all things social and environmental justice! Our library is primarily volunteer-run! You can check out our full library catalogue here or drop by our office to check it out in person.
Volunteering with our library can look different depending on your areas of interest! We are open to supporting different self-directed projects to support your learning as a volunteer and the growth of our library!
Currently 2 areas we are seeking volunteers to support with are:
- Library Inventory
- verify that our current online inventory matches our in-person library
- This could be a self-contained group project or individual project!
- Library Organization
- While our current library organisation structure works well, we are always open to feedback and input to develop a more robust organisation structure!
- This could be a self-contained group project or individual project!
Have an idea for a project? Or interested in developing a certain part of the library? Feel free to reach out and we’d love to have a quick chat and develop a project plan to help get you started and support you along your journey.
Content Creation Team
Our Content Creation team helps with creating online content for social media channels and our website.
Content Creation volunteers undertake Meme-Making, Content Research, and Street-Team Videos with support from APIRG Staff!
Memes
Our Meme Team meets 1-2 times a month to brainstorm ideas for memes to generate discussion about topics and interests of our choosing! This can be anything from climate change, local or global politics, campus policing, tuition increases, and more!
Content Research
Have a research topic you’re really passionate about and want to share information about? Maybe you’ve overly familiarised yourself with U of A President Bill Flanagan’s billed travel expenses, or maybe you’re a keen observer of Student Union politics? As a Content Research volunteer you will work independently and collaboratively to seek information on questions that scratch your curiosity and create a blog post, social media post, physical poster, and/or flyer to disseminate information!
Street-Team Videos
We love talking to students and hearing what’s really going on! With questions about how tuition increases and the affordability crisis is impacting students we’re digging in and talking about it!
Our Street-Team will create scripts with questions to ask students and be a part of conducting on the ground video interviews! Camera and audio equipment will be provided.