Green Venture offers an excellent opportunity for people of any age to get involved.  The benefits of volunteering with our community organization are:

• Self-fulfillment!
• Valuable experience to give your next resume or job interview a boost
• Insight into the exciting and dynamic world of Environmental Education and non-profit organizations
• Contribution to the community and to sustainable development in the Greater Hamilton Area
• High School Students can gain your 40 hours of community service towards your Ontario Secondary School Diploma

Fill out our application form to volunteer with us here!

For a list of current volunteer opportunities check here!

Looking for an opportunity to get outside, learn about gardening, or just try something new? Our EcoHouse is 2 acres of native plant gardens, rain gardens, a community vegetable garden, demonstration eco-lawn patches, permeable pavers and more. These grounds require a lot of maintenance and upkeep! Our green gardening volunteers assist in gardening or landscaping projects or other things at the EcoHouse education centre site. This work mostly takes place between April and October. Work includes weeding, watering, mulching, harvesting food from the community garden plots to donate to the food bank, planting, mowing, light carpentry, etc. Green Venture also runs a vegetable and herb seedling sale every Spring as a fundraiser that volunteers can assist with. Get in touch with us to learn about how to become a green gardening volunteer!

Are you a social media expert (or just know how to use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!?), familiar will MailChimp and other event/social networks such as Eventbrite and Bruha? Communicating with the community is an essential part of our not-for-profit success. The social media/communications volunteer would help to plan, write, create and post on our media channels to reach the Hamilton community. Opportunities include but are not limited to: creating blog posts, social media posts, graphic templates and promotional items for events and programs happening at Green Venture.

Special Event volunteers assist at various activities Green Venture is doing in the community and on-site. These are usually one-offs or other one-day-a-month volunteering. For example, we are always looking for volunteers to help at our Depave Paradise events, Seedy Saturday Hamilton in February or the Kids Water Festival in May. Green Venture also has a booth at many community events to promote our environmental education programming, including Art Crawl Night Market, Bike for Mike and at Farmers Markets. Special events volunteer opportunities can vary widely from month to month.

As a Seed Library Steward, you will have the opportunity to contribute to local biodiversity and food security by supporting and sustaining the Hamilton Seed Library. With locations at the EcoHouse and little libraries around the city, the Hamilton Seed Library acts as a free resource to provide members of the community with a place to borrow, return, and donate a wide variety of seeds for their gardens. The Hamilton Seed Library aims to empower communities to become more self-reliant, develop and cultivate sustainable gardening practices, and increase accessibility to locally grown and nutritious produce. Due to COVID-19, access to the Hamilton Seed Library is limited to the little free seed library located outside EcoHouse and our seed library partner locations.

Responsibilities of the Seed Library Steward include (but are not limited to): 

• Picking up seeds from EcoHouse,
• Packaging and labelling seeds for our seed libraries, 
• Dropping off seeds to our seed libraries to maintain stock within them, and
• Sharing your gardening knowledge with seed borrowers through photos shared to Green Venture.

Volunteers would commit to 1-2 hours of work each week with the possibility of expanding the role to include social media promotion of the seed libraries. 

Our popular children’s program, Nature Kids, is only able to run with the help of some amazing volunteers! If you’re in your element outside, enjoy engaging with children, and want a fun new volunteer role, this is for you!

The Program runs seasonally (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall)  for 5 weeks and we recruit volunteers about a month before each session begins.

Please reach out to us at naturekids@greenventure.ca. for more information.

Our Young Environmental Professionals Programs include our Youth Stewardship (YSP) and YouthQuake programs. Both are wonderful opportunities to connect with likeminded young people while working to make a positive environmental impact, learn professional skills, and gain community involvement hours.

Through the YSP Program, Hamilton high school students develop transferable professional skills, earn volunteer hours, and gain knowledge of environmental issues. Guest speakers in the environmental field share their expertise. As part of this program, we offer mentorship and mini-grants for students to develop hands-on action projects that address the chosen environmental issue, directly benefiting their local communities and the planet. Participants collaborate to design and implement these projects, putting their new environmental knowledge and professional skills into practice and making a meaningful difference in their communities.

YouthQuake is  our twice monthly, drop-in, virtual and in person YouthQuake meetings for eco conversations open to all Hamilton youth ages 14-24. Recent topics have included waste, consumerism, fast fashion, food choices, and more. The conversations are youth-led, and guided by Green Venture staff; with the occasional opportunity for guest speakers in the environmental field to share their expertise!

All of our volunteer work requires some paperwork (volunteer application, job description sign-off, training in Green Venture programs where applicable) and possibly such other requirements as a police check.

To receive regular updates on Green Venture’s volunteer opportunities, please subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter.

Fill out our application form to volunteer with us here!

Green Venture’s Board of Directors is currently seeking a new member to help provide strategic and operational direction for the organization. For more information, see the position description on our Board of Directors page.