A multi-faith group of participants attend a vigil organized by HIAS and local partners in New York, NY on June 15, 2025. (Lindsay Kagalis/HIAS)
Direct Service Roles
Our direct service volunteer program is for community members interested in direct partnership with asylum seekers through mentorship, English language partnership, interpretation and translation, or special project volunteering.
We are always recruiting for volunteers who speak the languages of our clients, and hold monthly onboarding sessions for volunteers with language skills. Those languages include Spanish, French, Russian, Ukranian, Dari, Pashto, Amharic, and Arabic. If you are fluent in any of these languages, please get in touch with our team!
We also conduct an annual onboarding for all volunteers. To create a basic profile in our volunteer database and be added to our monthly newsletter where we share opportunities to get involved prior to being onboarded, as well as the dates of our annual onboarding cycle, please click here.
Social Services and Research Projects
Volunteers can also support asylum seekers through social services projects, which include the following:
Letter Writing
In this monthly program, volunteers write letters of compassion and solidarity to people in immigration detention and participate in a short learning session that reflects on issues facing refugees and asylum seekers. Participants must be 18 or older. All letters will be sent and received by HIAS to protect privacy.
Our letter writing initiative is a remote program held on Zoom. You can find learning portions, or brief educational videos related to detention in the U.S. and topical immigration issues at the bottom of this page. To register for letter writing in the D.C. area, click here. To register for letter writing in the NYC area, click here.
Note: We are unable to accommodate participants in this program from outside the Greater Washington, D.C. or New York City areas. This program is for individual participants and not groups – for information on limited group volunteering experiences with HIAS, please contact DCvolunteer@hias.org or NYCvolunteer@hias.org.
Resource Guides
Volunteers work on walkthrough and resource guides to expand asylum seekers’ access to critical resources and awareness of important challenges that they will navigate in the U.S. Volunteers have worked on resource guides that address food budgeting and nutrition, tackling the housing search, and local vocational training programs.
Immigration Court Accompaniment
In New York, we partner with Co Counsel NYC, St. Paul & St. Andrew UMC and B’Nai Jeshurun on an interfaith accompaniment program called Sacred Court Support, where we accompany immigrants to ICE Check Ins and Master Calendar Hearings. To learn more and get involved, visit nycsacredcourtsupport.org
Contact
Questions? Please contact us by emailing nycvolunteer@hias.org or dcvolunteer@hias.org.
Direct Service Volunteer Program Roles
Mentors work one-on-one with asylum seekers to help buld program participants’ comfort in their new communities and capacity to face the many challenges related to the legal process.
Mentor and program participant partner relationships often include support in navigating the American educational system, help in professional networking and/or finding employment, and assistance in accessing and navigating mental health and medical systems and services.
English Language Partners (ELPs) are matched with program participants who want to learn or improve their English skills. Through weekly one-on-one conversational practice, ELPs empower and enable asylum seekers to communicate with their neighbors, employers, and service providers. For clients with little-to-no English language ability, we look for volunteers who share a language in common with the program participant, or have previous English teaching experience or ESL certification.
*All Long-Term Volunteers are asked to meet with their client partners, once matched, for approximately 1-2 hours per week for 6 months.
Special project volunteers work one-on-one with program participants on goal-oriented projects. Each project is unique – volunteers may help a program participant apply for a replacement social security card, review a resume, submit job applications, or navigate a specific affordable housing challenge. Projects vary in length from a few days to several weeks.
Volunteer Interpreters and/or Translators provide language support to program participants. The interpreter/translator volunteer facilitates accurate, culturally competent, and sensitive communication between non-English-speaking program participants and HIAS staff. This volunteer role involves communicating directly with program participants and/or handling their sensitive information.
In addition to our immigration court accompaniment program with partners in NYC, direct service volunteers also provide accompaniment to HIAS clients. Volunteers may drive or travel with program participants to appointments (medical appointments, ICE check ins, etc.), provide support, and at times interpret for clients at their appointments. Accompaniment is an optional component of several roles, as requested by the unique and individual needs of program participants.
There is no set time commitment for accompanying a program participant and you do not have to provide accompaniment as a direct service volunteer.
