Volunteering
Volunteering at Jamyang is fun and we appreciate and love our volunteers! It’s a great place for enthusiastic people to be in a dharma environment within an exciting central London location.
Here’s how you can volunteer according to your time and abilities:
Short Term Volunteering - few hours or a day:
Just come for a few hours, or few days to offer your time and skills.
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Please include a short summary of any specific skills you have, and what times and/or days you have available.
Full time Volunteering - 3 month residential programme:
Volunteer in a more serious way, by joining our 3 month residential volunteer Work Programme scheme. You can either work in our Hospitality Team (offering service such as cleaning, greeting visitors to Jamyang, setting up rooms for events etc) or in our Cafe Team (offering service in the Cafe: cleaning, serving customers, barista work, some cooking but training can be given if needed).
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Please include a short summary of why you would like to live and work at Jamyang for 3 months, any specific skills you have, and which programme you prefer to offer service for – Hospitality or Cafe.
Please be aware that this programme is a 35 hour a week service, with 2 days off per week. We offer a single room accommodation and all meals, plus access to most teachings and in house events.
It is helpful to have a strong healthy body and mind for this programme!
Help Host School Visits at Jamyang:
Jamyang Schools visits have been going for many years and the feed-back we receive has always been extremely positive. An opportunity has arisen for some new volunteers who would like to get involved with helping show children and teachers from the local Primary Schools around the center. We are looking for a person or persons who would be able to commit 2 or 3 hours on an irregular basis ( up to 4 or 5 days a month) during school term time.
The role involves:
1. Greeting children and teachers and giving them a brief introduction to the general rules and safety issues.
2. Speaking about the historical background of the building.
3. Showing small groups around the cells, garden, entrance hall and the small and large gompas.
4. Explaining the meaning of the Buddha Statues and the many Thangkas.
5. Telling the ' Life Story of the Historical Buddha'.
6. Leading a non-Buddhist meditation for a few minutes for the visiting children. To begin with until you felt confident your role would be to assist and learn from the existing volunteers.
Contact Jamyang: Phone 020 7820 8787 or
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
If you would like your school to visit Jamyang please contact Jamyang's office.
Volunteer for any of these specific Community Days during the year:
Annual Jumble Sale – held on the Bank Holiday in August each year. We need volunteers before the Jumble Sale day, to help sort the jumble. On the Jumble day itself, we need people to man the stalls, help in the Cafe, help with clean up at the end of the day, and help after the sale to distribute left over jumble (vehicle and driver would be excellent!)
Contact: Jamyang Director – This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Peace In The City Days – Three times a year on a Sunday, we host these Community Days to raise funds for Jamyang. Therapists offer their time free of charge, and the public purchase half hour therapy sessions at reduced rates i.e. massage, reiki, shiatsu, yoga, reflexology, head massage etc. Our Cafe is open these days too, and it’s a really lovely community day, relaxed and peaceful.
If you are a therapist willing to offer your services free of charge on that day, please Contact: Jane Sill - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Annual Work Camp - Held usually in August each year. We ask for help from volunteers to come and do painting, carpentry, tidying up jobs, gardening and all sorts of other way to help us maintain our historic building. Volunteers can come for the whole week, or a day, or a few hours, according to their time. We offer accommodation and meals in return for your help.
Contact: Director - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Repaying The Kindness Volunteers:
Jamyang runs a programme offering respite days to carers. Each respite day may include some of the following: offering delicious food and drink, simple meditations, yoga, art & craft days, talks by guest speakers, dancing, music, healthy eating advice, and group outings both within London and beyond.
We are looking for people who would like to experience the taste of compassion in action — we need additional practical help for our ongoing programme of daytime events for carers — we would like to build up a bank of people willing to offer some of their time to this project. You will most likely need to be available during the daytime and resident in London.
* A carer is someone who looks after a relative, partner or friend or child who is ill or frail or has a physical, mental health or learning disability.
Contact: The Manager - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Or leave a message on +44 (0) 20 7820 9020.
Help our Spiritual Programme Director:
Mike Murray, who organises Jamyang's entire spiritual programme (and much, much more!), is always looking for volunteers who can spare a few hours or days, helping him do tasks such as: keping our meditation rooms clean & tidy, taking care of our Library (cleaning, sorting and cataloguing books) delivering leaflets and helping with publicity.
Contact Mike: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Volunteering to do a specific project:
Historic Display Board: Creating a display board showing the history of the Old Courthouse to hang at Jamyang.
Skills required: Some artistic sense of display of material, researching history of our Old Courthouse (we have a lot of written material and some photos already), getting text and photos ready for print, researching printing options and prices, organizing for the board to be properly hung.
Scaffold Tower: Researching for a second hand scaffolding tower for Jamyang.
Skills required: Researching what is a good price for our needs, keeping an eye on ebay over a period of time, bidding for appropriate scaffolding tower when available, arranging delivery. (We need a high scaffolding tower for improvements to the outside front of the building particularly, but also for use in the gompa in future)
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN VOLUNTEERING!
