Volunteer!
Interested in volunteering? Contact us at info@yuwr.org or (510) 421-9897. YUWR gratefully accepts volunteers for the following tasks:
All-Purpose Volunteer / Animal Care Volunteer / Education Program Volunteer / Summer Internship Program / Public Outreach and Fund-Raising / Transportation / FOSTERCARE for WILDLIFE ORPHANS
All-Purpose Volunteer
The All-Purpose Volunteer is involved in animal care (see below), but that individual might also be assisting with wildlife calls, general cleaning, gardening, and maintenance. Please let us know if there is anything else you are interested in helping with, such as office management or fund-raising. We can find a use for any skill or interest!
Animal Care Volunteer
The Animal Care Volunteer works hands on with our wildlife patients. They are responsible for their day to day care which involves food preparation, weighing, medicating and feeding animals as well as cleaning cages, kennels, and other general tasks. Animal Care volunteers also have the unique opportunity to learn more about the species of animals they are caring for, which include fawns, squirrels, opossums and other wildlife. More often, these volunteers would come up for a hour or two every other day to feed the animals.
Education Program Volunteer
YUWR is looking for self-motivated volunteers who like to make presentations in front of elementary school-aged children. The ability to present a 45 minute slideshow about local wildlife in a fun and exciting way to keep the interest of kids is a must! Please contact us for more details.
Internship Program
YUWR offers a summer internship program. Interns must commit to 10 hours a week of volunteer time, performing duties ranging from animal care, veterinary appointments, cleaning and maintenance. At the end of the internship period, a certificate of appreciation as well as a recommendation letter will be provided to the intern for submission to any veterinary school or University. During this internship period, the intern will learn hands-on care and rehabilitation of wildlife animals. An experience like this is a requirement for many veterinary programs, and can only help your chances for acceptance!
Public Information Outreach and Fundraising
Part of our work consists of educating the public on how important our urban wildlife is and why. We have fliers and pamplets on how to live with urban wildlife and how beneficial urban wildlife is in direct ways. For example, opossums are wonderful mousers and snailers. When snail-bait is used, opossums eat the snails and die from the poison, allowing mice move into their territory. Wouldn’t you rather have an opossum living under your house eating all your mice and snails?
We also depend on Fundraising, and always welcome volunteers to our fundraising efforts. Periodic fundraising efforts will be published in detail in our News & Events blog.
Transportation
Many injured animals are brought to the Berkeley or Oakland Animal Care & Control. Often, these city departments are overwhelmed with other problems and are not able to transport these animals to facilities better equipped to care for their medical needs, such as ours. We want to develop a transport team to be on standby in the case that Animal Care & Control is unable to transport an animal. Responsible, insured drivers needed.
Fostering
We are looking for dedicated, responsible volunteers who have the time and are willing to take home a small group of wildlife babies who need regular nursing, and bottle-feed and care for them as they grow, according to our protocols.
Home Care is both the most rewarding and most difficult part of this work. It will change your life and enrich your world, but it is time consuming. You will need the ability to feed these babies every 2+ hours during the day when they are very young, graduating to fewer and fewer feedings throughout the day as they grow up. For their first 6 weeks of life, during this critical time, they can travel with you in a nestbox for feeding. (check with your job to ensure that your boss will allow this, if needed) You will also need a safe, quiet room in your home to keep their playcage that is free from pets or human traffic. When they are older, you have the choice of continuing their care by providing them an outdoor pre-release cage in your backyard, or you can return them to us for placement in one of our outdoor pens.
If you are interested, please watch our events calendar to learn of future training classes.