Work with us

Volunteering
Volunteering for Spirit means becoming a ‘members of staff’ (although not an employee) who chooses to donate their time for no financial reward. There are a number of ways you can volunteer for Spirit shown below.

Volunteers make an important contribution to our work and we therefore spend time inducting, supporting & training our volunteers. We do however have limited resources and therefore always have to consider carefully the suitability of individualsas well as the total number of volunteers we are able to manage.

Shore Support
Spirit is based on the west of Scotland (usually Oban or Greenock). We are interested in recruiting local volunteers who are able to support us in port. Spirit normally has 24hrs in port between courses when the sea staff carry out all the safety checks, shop for the week, do the laundry, carry out maintenance and a host of other activities.

If you live locally to either Oban or Greenock, have your own transport or a full driving licence D1 endorsed and think you could regularly spare some time to help out then we would like to here from you.

Spirit regularly visits other parts of Scotland & the UK each summer therefore if you live by a port and think you might be able to help out during a visit we would also like to hear from you.

Maintenance & Refit
As a traditionally built, hard working sail training vessel Spirit requires lots of maintenance throughout the year and during winter refit periods.

If you have skills in boatbuilding, rigging, marine electrics & electronics or diesel maintenance and think you could spare some time then we’d like to hear from you.

Equally if you have no particular maintenance skills but are prepared to work hard and get dirty, scraping, painting & varnishing then again we would like to hear from you.

Sea Staff
Spirit is staffed by a permanent team including Skipper, Mate, Bosun and watch leaders. This team is supplemented by a small group of volunteer watch leaders.

Sailing a traditionally rigged vessel, while running an intensive personal development course can be extremely challenging. We only take on volunteers who have the ability to relate to and work with our client group as well as safely run a deck watch.

Volunteers sea staff require:

• Experience & ability of working with young people from challenging backgrounds.
• A strong desire to support the aims and objectives of Fairbridge.
• RYA watch leader or equivalent.

If you think you have what it takes to become a volunteer watch leader then we would like to hear from you. We run training and selection weekends annually for new and existing volunteer sea staff.

Please email craig.wilson@fairbridge.org.uk detailing your background, experience and reasons for wanting to volunteer.