Volunteer Today through AGU’s Online Community
By Chris McEntee, Executive Director/CEO, AGU and Margaret Leinen, AGU Past President and Leadership Development/Governance Committee Chair
When AGU Connect launched a little over a year ago, our goal was to provide an online community for Earth and space scientists to engage in discussions and build connections. Today, we’re very pleased to announce an exciting new feature: Volunteer Central.
This easy-to-use tool is intended to make volunteering with AGU even easier. Volunteer Central will make it easy to find the right opportunities for you. Once you log in to AGU Connect, all you need to do is fill out your volunteer profile and opt in to Volunteer Central. The easy-to-follow steps are included at the end of this post.
Every Bit of Volunteering Helps Advance Science
Volunteers are essential to AGU’s success in many ways, including providing leadership, encouraging and engaging young scientists in their work, and offering guidance and insight across a variety of projects. Whether you are an early-career scientist looking to become more involved in specific projects related to your field or an experienced scientist looking to engage with other professionals, volunteering is a beneficial and rewarding way to support the scientific community.
An early-career scientist who took part in a Thriving Earth Exchange project discovered that the experience has “taught me how to look outside the lab and scope for issues challenging the communities we live in, how to bring community leaders together with experts in the field (who I’ve realized are always willing to help), and how to share solutions to those problems with the stakeholders so that specific actions can be taken and tangible impacts be observed.”
Follow these three simple steps to get started today:
- Activate your profile on AGU Connect, if you have not done so already. You can begin by going to connect.agu.org and logging in with your AGU ID/email address. Enter your login information, click “Create a new account,” and establish your password.
- Fill out your volunteer profile, including your experience, the amount of time you’re available to volunteer, and brief information about why you’re volunteering and what perspectives you bring.
- Opt in to Volunteer Central with one click. Click on the button at the top of the page to the right of “Invite me to volunteer when opportunities match my expertise.” Once the button slides over to read “Yes,” you’ve joined Volunteer Central!
I have a need for volunteers. Could you post this volunteer opportunity?
Young Voices for the Planet needs volunteers to help man our booth this week at AGU. You would be talking to people about youth solutions to the climate crisis, showing our Young Voices for the Planet films, discussing our Civic Engagement and Democracy Educator Workshops and showing Lynne Cherry’s children’s books.