Virtual Volunteering

As the initial lockdown and response to the pandemic unfolded it became apparent that things at the Trust were going to be very different in 2020.  An important aspect of the RiverLife project focusses on the activities we carry out with volunteers.  Prior to lockdown I had been working with and training a number of volunteers to carry out river habitat walkovers and freshwater invertebrate identification.   This involved working in sometimes remote places carrying out survey work or at microscopes in the Trust’s offices; all of which was now impossible due to Covid restrictions.

From the outset of the pandemic the Trust had received a number of requests from volunteers keen to gain experience with us so the decision was taken to move any training we could offer online.  To do this I created online storage space to share files and training materials and used Microsoft Teams so that we could easily communicate with our volunteers.  I was then able to organise an initial online training session with each group of volunteers which allowed me to present some slides on how to digitise our walkover map data using GIS software or how to identify different invertebrates.  These sessions also allowed me to meet the volunteers and learn a bit about what they were interested in and what they hoped to get from their experience.

Identifying freshwater invertebrates can prove difficult at the best of times so in order to give the best experience to our volunteers we provided them all with some kits to allow them to work at home.  These kits had a microscope and identification guides to get them going but I also encouraged the volunteers to use Teams to send pictures of any tricky to identify invertebrates (taken via a mobile phone down the eyepiece) which I could then help with.  I also prepared an online folder with a kind of taxonomic key – a set of indexed photos of all of the invertebrate families our volunteers were likely to encounter so that they could compare with what was under their microscopes. While moving our volunteering activities online can never replace working with people face to face, the feedback from the volunteers has been really positive, with many of them welcoming something different to do as a distraction in these strange times.