Data Entry Volunteers MapInfo GIS Volunteers Volunteer with knowledge of Visual Basic (Microsoft Word Macro's) Volunteer with knowledge of XML web services/ SOAP Protocol Volunteer with good knowledge of Microsoft Access Data Entry Volunteers
MapInfo GIS Volunteers
Volunteer with knowledge of Visual Basic (Microsoft Word Macro's)
Volunteer with knowledge of XML web services/ SOAP Protocol
Volunteer with good knowledge of Microsoft Access
Volunteering mainly takes place in the BRERC office during normal office hours during the week. Volunteering at evenings and weekends is, unfortunately, not possible on a regular basis.
BRERC is a small organisation with 3 members of full time staff and one part time member of staff. Whilst we welcome, and indeed rely on, volunteers to help us with our work, we ask volunteers to be able to volunteer on a regular basis for a period of at least a few months. We ask this because as a volunteer you will not gain or retain the knowledge needed to volunteer without this commitment, and we don't wish to use our time or yours ineffectually.
Due to these logistical reasons we can normally only accept one new volunteer at any given time, in order to give them the training and time commitment required to learn our processes and systems. All volunteer applications are held on our system and are prioritised, where possible, with regard to the needs of both the volunteer and BRERC as an organisation.
Prior to commencing volunteering we ask all potential volunteers to attend an informal interview where we can have a chat about what they want to get out of volunteering, what we can offer, and to go through any other relevant information.
Volunteers play an important role in the everyday workings of the BRERC office. One of our volunteers, working half a day per fortnight for the last 10 years, has entered over 30,000 records - thats over 3% of the one million records in our main database!
Volunteers don't just do data entry though. Many perform valuable work using our GIS mapping system, organising events, writing guides and articles - sometimes even computer programming! A wide range of skills are applicable to the work we do - and which we couldn't do without voluntary help.
Opportunity for organised voluntary survey work is very limited; at present most of our volunteering is office based. We do however hold regular internal and external training days, which all are welcome to attend.
BRERC deals with every major environmental organisation within the Bristol region, supplying most of them with data and working in partnership with them. As such, BRERC is an excellent place for a volunteer to gain an understanding of the environment and conservation practices in the former county of Avon and beyond. If you maintain a regular voluntary presence at BRERC for a reasonable period of time, you will learn a huge amount, gain many skills and be presented with many opportunities you would not otherwise come across. Whilst we cannot guarentee offers of paid work, a large proportion of our volunteers have had the opportunity to either apply for paid positions within BRERC or have found work elsewhere. Their experience gained through voluntary work at BRERC is an important factor in this.
If you are not looking for paid work or career development, many of our volunteers come to us for different reasons, ranging from a love of wildife to a desire to widen their social circles. This creates a friendly and relaxed atmosphere within the BRERC office, and means our volunteers are of a good demographic mix.
Please include:
a)Your particular wildlife interests or experience;
b)Why you want to volunteer at BRERC;
c)Which days of the week/times you are free and wish to volunteer.
If you can attach a C.V. or similar this is helpful but not essential.
No matter what your skills or abilities, feel free to contact us with regard to volunteering. The positions below are just a guide as to some of the tasks we have identified.
Data Entry VolunteersBRERC has just over a million records on a 'main' database, but there are an estimated further two million to enter, with more being provided to us all the time! The data ranges from single records of birds, butterflies and mammals to whole reports listing many species.
If you like the idea of verifying, entering and checking some of this data, then please do get in touch. Having a broad knowledge of common UK wildlife is definately a great help here.
We use our own database and entry sytems designed in house, and full training is provided on how to use these.
If you are interested in this opportunity then please contact Daniel Marshall by e-mail or by phone via our contacts page.
MapInfo GIS VolunteersBRERC sometimes requires volunteers to undertake projects involving our GIS systems. We have a lot of interest in this kind of work from volunteers and only a limited amount of positions available.
We use MapInfo Professional GIS systems with Ordnance Survey Mastermap Data and recent Aerial Photos as the base layers to perform all our GIS work.
Training in the use of MapInfo takes some time and so we would ask that any volunteer who wishes to help in this position can commit at least one day a week for several months.
Also, we would request that any volunteer is computer literate to a good level and is comfortable with using Microsoft Windows, Word, Excel, etc, on a day to day basis.
This can be an excellent opportunity for university students who hope to go into environmental disciplines that require GIS to get some practical experience of using the system.
If you are interested, please contact Daniel Marshall via the Contacts page.
Volunteer with knowledge of Visual Basic (Microsoft Word Macro's)BRERC uses a report template generator to compile information and species list which are automatically inserted into documents reporting on our field surveys. The complicated macros to generate these lists were written in Visual Basic by a computer programmer, and whilst we have a basic idea how to fix simple problems, an occasional volunteer who could help with larger scale modifications would be useful.
If you are interested in this opportunity then please contact Daniel Marshall by e-mail or by phone via our contacts page.
Volunteer with knowledge of XML web services/ SOAP ProtocolBRERC currently makes all the information held on our systems available though the NBN Gateway website. We have had demonstations of pulling data down from the Gateway in specific ways using Web Services, which look very exciting and powerful tools. As we have had no previous experience of using these queries, if you have a knowledge of such issues and can spare us a little time to help us understand the technical side of building and running such services, it would save BRERC a lot of time.
If you are interested in this opportunity then please contact Daniel Marshall by e-mail or by phone via our contacts page.
Volunteer with good knowledge of Microsoft AccessBRERC uses the Lotus Approach database program to store and process the vast majority of our data, and we have invested a lot of time and effort into designing database forms and systems using Approach. Unfortunately Lotus Approach is not a widely used program. Some databases we have developed would be better provided to our partners in a Microsoft Access format, but our in house knowledge of Access is not strong.
A volunteer to help us 'port' some of our Lotus Approach designs to Microsoft Access would make the delivery of these projects much easier.
If you are interested in this opportunity then please contact Daniel Marshall by e-mail or by phone via our contacts page.