Have you been looking for a way to give back to your community, or have you always wanted to be that person someone could call when they needed a listening ear? Well, the amazing team at Dublin Lesbian Line are looking for fab volunteers for their essential helpline, and you could be one of them!

The Dublin Lesbian Line is one of the oldest LGBT+ helplines in the world, helping those in need for over 40 years. With your help, it can keep going from strength to strength, making a huge difference in innumerable people’s lives.

The team have shared all you need to know if you’d like to get involved:

Essential characteristics:

Identity:
All volunteers are female-identified* and somewhere along the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
Age:
All volunteers are over 18 years of age.
Commitment and Reliability:
As a small organisation, every single person counts in the success of running a support service. Without committed and reliable volunteers they can’t function!
Empathy and Compassion:
They need people who are able to relate to others, even if they do not share their experiences. The community and the people they support are extremely diverse and volunteers need to be able to accept and support people from all kinds of circumstances.
Confidentiality:
Volunteers are required to keep confidential the work the DLL do in relation to the helpline and the online chat.
A desire to be part of a female-run female-focused service:
While DLL support people from all backgrounds and identities, their main focus is the women* of our community, and they design their supports around this.
Embracing of and patience for change:
It is an exciting time for DLL and they’d love you to be a part of the team while they grow. However change can take time and sometimes they encounter glitches; so they need people who can have patience with this as well as a willingness to throw themselves into making their service the best for the women* of our community.

Note: Female-identifed/women* is inclusive of trans women, non-binary and genderqueer people. 

Things to consider before volunteering:

​Other roles:
If the helpline support doesn’t sound like it’s for you but you would still like to volunteer with DLL they would love to have you on board somewhere where you feel your skills lie – social media and website, fundraising and grant applications, occasional event volunteers, or something you feel they could benefit from that they haven’t thought of yet – just let them know!
All of their volunteers identify as female and somewhere along the LGBTQIA+ spectrum:
If you have any questions about this please do not hesitate to contact them.
Commitment:
Helpline Volunteer commitment is two three-hour shifts per month on Thursday evenings and one monthly meeting.
Reliability:
Their service is only as reliable as their volunteers, therefore, to be a consistent service they also need you to be as well!
One year commitment:
All volunteers need to be able to stay with Dublin Lesbian Line a minimum of one year as they need to be able to make long-term plans and strategies to sustain DLL.

So if you feel you’ve got what it takes to join the Dublin Lesbian Line team, please fill out this application form by August 18. Interviews will then be held at the end of August.