Volunteers are essential to our work. If you’re looking for a fun way to get involved, we have volunteer opportunities ranging from researching topics for books to expanding our digital reach to packing books to send around the world. You’ll gain valuable experience with a non-profit publisher working for social justice. Most volunteers must be able to work in our Berkeley, CA office. E-mail jobsearch@hesperian.org for more information.
Current Volunteer Opportunities
Volunteer Position: Digital Publications
Hesperian is seeking volunteers to further our expansion into digital publishing! We are currently converting our lifesaving health guides into wiki format, and volunteers are needed to proofread, correct, and polish the materials – on primary health care, women’s health, environmental health, and other topics – in this new digital platform.
Minimum Qualifications
- Attention to detail
- Comfortable with technology
Desirable additional Qualifications
- Experience in MediaWiki a huge asset
- Spanish language skills a plus
- Skills using Photoshop or other image editing software useful
- Interest in primary health care, women’s health, environmental health, international development, social justice
Commitment: minimum of 1 month, 4 to 15 hours a week. After one month of training, work can be done either at home or in our offices, with periodic check-ins at our offices.
Volunteer Position: Hesperian Image Library
Hesperian is looking for volunteer Image Library Taggers to help us move the art in all of our life-saving books into a brand-new database by tagging new art and retagging art used in our books. Unlike many medical book illustrations, most of our drawings are of people, not disembodied organs or body parts.
Primary responsibilities
- Tagging art in ThirdLight database
- Doing quality assurance on art tagged by other volunteers
Minimum Qualifications
- Attention to detail
- Strong written skills and visual sense
- Comfortable with technology and web-based database
- Interest and experiencing in indexing a plus.
Commitment: This is a 6-month project, and we are looking for volunteers who could commit a minimum of 3 months, 4 to 15 hours a week. After training, work can be done either at home or in our offices.
Volunteer position: Packing and Shipping Books
Join the fun crew of volunteers in Hesperian’s Book Order Fulfillment department. Help pack our life-saving health manuals for shipment from Berkeley to people and places in the U.S. and all over the world. We ship to bookstores, universities, individuals and charitable organizations in the U.S., plus village health workers in Kenya, remote clinics in Guatemala, midwives in India, women with disabilities in Papua New Guinea, and more.
Qualifications:
#1: Desire to help empower people around the world to have better health!
Also: Ability to safely lift up to 20 lbs, ability to stand for two hours, basic computer skills, good attention to detail.
We’ll train you in everything you need to know!
Commitment: Approximately two hours once a week on a fairly consistent basis – and if you want to contribute more time that’s great too!