Help your community and support all of our essential services!

Volunteer at UCAN

Want to connect with others? Want to give back something to your community? Have skills that can improve the lives of others?

UCAN is a great place to volunteer! With over a dozen different social, health and education programs, opportunities abound. You can do everything from helping to decrease hunger to improving access to healthcare.

Volunteering allows you to benefit and strengthen our communities. And there are loads of ways that you benefit from serving others! Volunteering helps you:

  • Connect with others. You make new friends and contacts, while improving your social skills.
  • Improve your physical and mental health. Helping others boosts your self-confidence and increases happiness and overall well-being. Studies have even shown that those who volunteer live longer.
  • Advance your career. You can meet people already working in a field you’re interested in. You can gain skills that you can use to get a paying job.
  • Add joy and fun to your life. You get to explore your passions. You get to do things that aren’t part of your regular routine.

We will work with you to find the opportunity that best meets your interests and your schedule. We have opportunities ranging from single day events to those where you can help out on a regular basis.

Volunteer Opportunities

Medicaid Transportation Driver

Do you have your own car? Can you spare a few hours a week to help members of your community safely travel for healthcare services so they can live healthier lives? As one of our team of Medicaid Transportation Drivers, you help those who have no other way of getting to appointments get the healthcare they need. We offer reimbursement for mileage costs in taking patients to appointments, as well as other volunteer benefits.

Cooking Matters Instructor

Do you get a kick out of cooking? Want to help folks eat healthier foods? We’re looking for passionate foodies who are interested in teaching Cooking Matters classes to low-income residents in Douglas County. We provide you with a fun-to-use curriculum that covers basic cooking techniques, nutrition info, and how to shop on a budget. You’ll share your own skills in shopping for the best foods, reading ingredient labels, and preparing tasty dishes. You’ll encourage folks to make healthier food choices that are tasty and low-cost.

Food Hero

You have the opportunity to literally be a hero, helping Feeding Umpqua operate its Food Hero @ The Farmers’ Market Program. Help us distribute recipe kits with fresh, local produce from local Farmers’ Markets. Pass out recipe kits and activities to families attending markets. Help with booth set-up and tear down. As our hero you’ll be helping children and parents enjoy new fruits and veggies made available at our local markets.

Outpost Support

Feeding Umpqua operates a mobile pantry, the Outpost, bringing food to remote communities in Douglas County. We serve Day’s Creek and Tiller, Camas Valley and Elkton, even Diamond Lake. Help us help residents living far from major grocery outlets! If you live near Roseburg, you can help fill the pantry with delicious food. You can select recipes and prepare food for demos offered at the Outpost. If you live near one of these communities, you can help us set up, help folks selecting foods and filling out paperwork, and help with pantry hygiene.

Food Warehouse Assistant

Ever wonder how we get 1.5 million pounds of food out to our partner pantries and kitchens? Well, in this position, you’ll not only get to see the inner workings of a major distribution center, you’ll help keep our emergency food on the go. You can pick up donated food from food drives and grocery stores. Sort through donations and box up food for distribution. Help out with projects that play a critical role in getting food emergency food out to thousands of your neighbors.

Head Start Classroom Helpers

Bring a smile to Douglas County’s youngest students. We’re looking for kind, loving, and patient people to help in classrooms. You can help out in so many ways, from nurturing a lonely child to sharing some special interest you have. If you want to support our program working directly with our children, you can help prepare activity materials or keep our classrooms nice and organized. It’s hard not to smile yourself when you enter the world of our young learners.

Want to learn more about volunteering at UCAN? We’d love to hear from you. You can e-mail us at volunteer@ucancap.org. You can also complete a general application to volunteer, and e-mail it to the above address, and we’ll get back in touch.

We also have a large number of seniors who volunteers in our AmeriCorps Seniors RSVP Program. Take a look here to see opportunities offered through this UCAN program.