Volunteering in Berlin: 9 ways in, and what each asks
Volunteering in Berlin: 9 organisations, their shift times, which need no German, and the 200 hours a year that earn the Ehrenamtskarte. Checked August 2026.
Volunteering in Berlin costs nothing and needs no German at several organisations. The Berliner Tafel runs after-work sorting shifts every Tuesday, from 17:00 or 18:00 until 21:00, minimum age 18. Two hundred hours a year earns you the Ehrenamtskarte.
The short version
- Cheapest reliable option: all of it is free. Nobody in this guide charges a fee, a membership or a placement cost. The currency is hours.
- Best option overall: vostel.de. English interface, 599 Berlin listings when we checked, and a filter for No German skills that does the hard part for you.
- The one to skip right now: dog walking at Tierheim Berlin. The shelter states it cannot accept further applications for its dog volunteering because of the number already received.
- The insider detail: the Berliner Tafel runs an After-Work-Schicht every Tuesday from 17:00 or 18:00 until 21:00. It is the one evening slot in this guide that fits around a full-time job.
- What it costs: nothing. Two hundred hours a year, sustained for at least a year, qualifies you for the Ehrenamtskarte and its discounts at more than 500 partners across Berlin and Brandenburg.
How we checked: shift times, age limits and language requirements below come from each organisation’s own website and from berlin.de, checked August 2026.
Contents
- The fastest way in: one filter most people miss
- Nine ways in, side by side
- Berliner Tafel: the actual shift times
- Serve the City Berlin: one Saturday a month, in English
- Hejmo, formerly Give Something Back to Berlin: the English-language route
- Berliner Stadtmission and the Bahnhofsmission
- Tierheim Berlin: what is open and what is not
- The Ehrenamtskarte: 200 hours, and what it buys
- bürgeraktiv is switched off — where the listings live now
- How we chose these
The fastest way in: one filter most people miss
Most guides to volunteering in Berlin hand you a list of charities and wish you luck. The problem is never the list. The problem is that you write to four organisations, three of them answer in German, and the fourth needs you every Wednesday morning when you are at work.
vostel.de solves most of that in about ninety seconds. It is a Berlin volunteering platform with a full English interface, and when we checked in August 2026 it listed 599 opportunities in Berlin. The part that matters is the sidebar. You can filter by required German level — the lowest option is No German skills — and separately by frequency: once, project-based or regularly.
Set both filters before you read a single listing. Everything that survives is something you can actually do, in a language you actually speak, at a rhythm you can actually keep. If you have been in the city a few months and are still circling the same question, this is a more reliable move than another evening scrolling — and it pairs well with the other routes in our guide to making friends in Berlin without German.
You do need to register to sign up for a slot. Registration is free.
Nine ways in, side by side
Two of the nine below are search tools, one is an annual fair, and six are organisations you can write to tonight. The language column reflects what each organisation publishes about itself, not a guess.
| Where | What you would be doing | Language | Shape of the commitment | How to start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vostel.de | Search tool. 599 Berlin listings at time of checking, across every cause | Full English site; filter for No German skills | Filter by once, project-based or regularly | Register free, then sign up for a slot |
| Berliner Engagementplattform (LAGFA Berlin) | Search tool run by the association of Berlin’s volunteer agencies | German | Whatever the listing says | Search via lagfa.berlin |
| Serve the City Berlin | Practical and social projects: painting, cooking, time with elderly and homeless people, work with children | English site and English-speaking network | Single projects of 2–3 hours; one Action Day a month on a Saturday | Pick a project from their events page, or email them |
| Hejmo (formerly Give Something Back to Berlin) | Community projects, plus weekly language cafés in English, Arabic and German | English | One-off events or longer-term projects | Read the programme pages, then email welcome@hejmoberlin.org |
| Berliner Tafel | Sorting and packing rescued food, unloading vans, driving or riding the collection tours | German in practice | Fixed shifts, including Tuesday evenings; 48 LAIB und SEELE distribution points also take occasional local help | Fill in the interest questionnaire, or email ehrenamt@berliner-tafel.de |
| Berliner Stadtmission | Work with homeless people, refugees, children, older people; includes the Bahnhofsmission | German | Browse the open placements, then agree a rhythm | Interest form, or ehrenamt@berliner-stadtmission.de |
| Tierheim Berlin | Dog walking, cat house, foster care, post-adoption visits | German | Dog walking asks at least once a week | Minimum age 18; dog and cat house applications are currently closed |
| Restlos Glücklich | Food-waste and climate-friendly cooking education | German | Project-based | Email mitmachen@restlos-gluecklich.berlin |
| Berliner Freiwilligenbörse | Annual volunteering fair — meet organisations in person instead of emailing them | German | One afternoon | Held at the Rotes Rathaus; the 19th edition ran on 25 April 2026, 11:00–16:00 |
The honest read of that table: if you speak no German, three of the nine are genuinely open to you today — vostel, Serve the City and Hejmo. The rest are reachable, but you will be the person asking everyone to switch languages, which is fine for a shift of stacking crates and hard for a shift of listening to someone in crisis.
Found a shift you would actually turn up to? The first one is the hard one, and it is much easier with someone next to you. MITRA is for finding someone nearby who wants to do the same thing at the same time. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
Berliner Tafel: the actual shift times
The Berliner Tafel is the largest and most physical option here, and it is the only one that publishes its shift pattern in enough detail to plan around. Its headquarters sits in Hall 1 of the Berliner Großmarkt, where donated food arrives, gets sorted, and goes out again.
| Role | When |
|---|---|
| Sorting and packing — early shift | 08:30–12:30 |
| Sorting and packing — late shift | 13:00–17:00 Monday to Thursday; 11:00–15:30 Friday |
| Sorting and packing — after-work shift | Tuesdays, 17:00 or 18:00 until 21:00 |
| Sorting — Saturday | 09:00–14:00 |
| Loading and unloading vans | Monday to Saturday, 12:00–16:00 |
| Collection tours (driver or co-driver) | Start 08:00 or 09:00, back around 14:00–15:00 |
| Delivery tours | 11:30 until around 17:00 |
| KIMBA children’s cooking classes | Mornings, Tuesday to Friday |
Drivers need to be comfortable handling a large manual-transmission vehicle in Berlin traffic. Co-drivers carry crates, and the organisation says so plainly rather than dressing it up. For the roles at the Großmarkt the minimum age is 18.
Beyond the central warehouse there are 48 LAIB und SEELE distribution points across the city, each running a weekly collection, sort and hand-out. They already have fixed volunteer teams, and those teams occasionally need reinforcement from people who live in the district. It is worth asking, because a neighbourhood point means a shorter commute and the same faces each time — the thing that turns a shift into a routine and a routine into people you know.
To apply, fill in the interest questionnaire on their volunteering page or email ehrenamt@berliner-tafel.de. There is a phone line too: 030 68 81 50 03.
Serve the City Berlin: one Saturday a month, in English
Serve the City Berlin e.V. is the softest landing on this list for anyone who has just arrived. The site runs in English, the network is international, and the structure is built for people who cannot promise a year of Wednesdays.
Two formats matter. Single projects last two to three hours and change from month to month — practical work at one location, social work at another. Action Days happen once a month on a Saturday: everyone meets at a central point at around 13:00, hears what the projects are, splits into teams with a project leader, and comes back to the same point at around 18:00 to share how it went.
That closing feedback time is the part worth showing up for. It is a room of strangers who have just spent an afternoon doing something together, which is a considerably better place to meet people than a bar. If your Saturdays currently look like a scroll and a walk, this is a way to fill one — and our list of things to do alone in Berlin covers the rest of the month.
Projects also cover creative work — murals, painting a dining room at a care home, designing a playground — so a skill you thought was irrelevant to charity often is not. Contact runs through christine@servethecity.berlin.
One Saturday a month is a plan, not a life change. Post it on MITRA and go with someone who wants the same afternoon instead of turning up cold. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
Hejmo, formerly Give Something Back to Berlin: the English-language route
Give Something Back to Berlin was built by newcomers for newcomers, and it renamed itself Hejmo in 2025. It still operates in English. Its own wording about volunteers is blunt — they are the backbone of everything the organisation does — and you can either help with a one-off event or join a longer-term programme by bringing a skill you already have.
Among the regular strands are the Open Language Cafés — English, Arabic and German, running weekly. They are rooms where people teach each other, which means you are useful from the first session simply by speaking the language you grew up with. That is rarer than it sounds. Most volunteering asks you to learn something before you are helpful.
The way in is to read through their programmes first and work out which one fits you, then email welcome@hejmoberlin.org. Vague enthusiasm gets a vague answer here; naming a programme and two evenings you are free gets a real one.
Berliner Stadtmission and the Bahnhofsmission
The Berliner Stadtmission is the large, old, institutional option, and it covers the widest range of people: children and young people, older people, homeless people, refugees, people on low incomes, people leaving prison, and church communities.
Among its projects is the Bahnhofsmission, the station-based service for people arriving with nowhere to go. It is demanding work and it is not a soft introduction to the city.
Rather than a single sign-up form, the Stadtmission publishes a list of open placements (Freie Einsatzstellen) and asks you to submit an expression of interest against one of them. You can also go straight to the volunteering team on ehrenamt@berliner-stadtmission.de or 030 69033434. Expect the conversation to happen in German.
Tierheim Berlin: what is open and what is not
Walking shelter dogs is the idea almost everyone reaches for first, and right now it is the one to skip. Tierheim Berlin states that interest in its dog volunteering has been so high that it cannot accept further applications at the moment. The same applies to the cat house.
Worth knowing anyway, because it reopens. The shelter’s minimum age for any volunteering is 18. Dog walkers are asked to have time regularly — at least once a week — and to bring real experience handling dogs, not just enthusiasm. A valid tetanus vaccination is required across the animal-facing roles.
Two routes stay open in the meantime: fostering, which asks for several hours a day and, for cats, secured windows and balcony netting before you are approved; and post-adoption follow-up visits, which mostly happen in the evenings and at weekends and need a training session first. Contact is ehrenamt@tierheim-berlin.de or 030 76888-122.
The Ehrenamtskarte: 200 hours, and what it buys
Berlin and Brandenburg run a joint recognition card for people who volunteer seriously. It is not a requirement, it is not a permit, and nobody will ask you for it at a shift. It is a thank-you with discounts attached, at more than 500 partners — museums, cultural venues, shops, restaurants and services across both states.
The conditions are specific, and they are the clearest published answer to the question “how much volunteering counts as real volunteering here”:
- The volunteering takes place in Berlin.
- It has been going for at least one year.
- It amounts to at least 200 hours a year — berlin.de puts that at roughly four hours a week.
- It is continuing, not finished.
- It is unpaid, beyond reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses.
There is no legal entitlement to the card. You apply through the free Ehrenamtskarte app on iOS or Android; the organisation you volunteer with confirms your hours, and the card then lives in the app. Postal and email applications still exist for people who cannot use the app, and they take longer. If your volunteering cannot be confirmed by a formal organisation, the Berlin volunteer agency for your district can help instead.
Two hundred hours is a lot of Tuesdays. The people who get there are almost never the ones doing it alone — MITRA helps you find someone nearby who wants the same slot, so the shift becomes something you look forward to. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
bürgeraktiv is switched off — where the listings live now
If you search for volunteering in Berlin in English, a large share of the guides you land on will point you at bürgeraktiv, the state’s engagement portal. That advice is out of date. The Senate department for culture and social cohesion now states plainly that bürgeraktiv has been shut down, and directs people to two replacements.
- engagiertes.berlin — the central information portal for people already volunteering: funding, training, venues, and a tool for generating a formal record of the skills you have built.
- LAGFA Berlin — the umbrella body for Berlin’s volunteer agencies, running a search that pools listings from all of them. LAGFA has existed as an alliance since 1998 and became a registered association in 2021.
Both are in German. For an English-first search, vostel remains the better tool — but if you want the official, city-run view of what needs doing, LAGFA is where it moved.
There is also an offline version of the same thing. The Berliner Freiwilligenbörse is a volunteering fair held at the Rotes Rathaus, with around 70 stands inside and about 40 open-air stands on the square. The 19th edition ran on 25 April 2026 from 11:00 to 16:00. Walking between stands and asking questions in person skips the email round entirely, which is worth remembering when the fair next comes round.
How we chose these
We started from the question a newcomer actually asks, which is not “which charities exist” but “what could I turn up to this month without German, without money, and without committing my life”. Everything in this guide had to be reachable by an individual acting alone, with no placement fee and no agency in the middle.
Every time, age limit and requirement above was taken from the organisation’s own website or from berlin.de, not from an aggregator or another blog. Where an organisation does not publish its shift pattern, we said so instead of estimating one. Where a route is currently closed — Tierheim Berlin’s dog and cat volunteering — we left it in and marked it closed, because the alternative is you finding out after you write the email.
We also cut things. Placement schemes that charge a fee are not in this guide. Neither are the international “volunteer abroad” programmes that advertise Berlin, because they sell an experience rather than fill a shift.
Questions people ask
Can I volunteer in Berlin without speaking German?
Yes, at some organisations. Serve the City Berlin and Hejmo, formerly Give Something Back to Berlin, both run in English. The volunteering platform vostel.de has an English interface and a filter for opportunities that require no German skills, which is the fastest way to see what is genuinely open to you. Larger German institutions such as the Berliner Stadtmission and Tierheim Berlin publish and operate in German.
How do I find volunteer work in Berlin?
Start with vostel.de, filter for the German level you have and the frequency you can keep, and register to sign up for a slot. For the official city view, LAGFA Berlin pools listings from all of Berlin’s volunteer agencies. The old state portal bürgeraktiv has been switched off, so ignore guides that still link to it.
Is volunteering in Berlin paid?
No. Volunteering is unpaid by definition. The Ehrenamtskarte rules make this explicit: to qualify, your volunteering must carry no payment and no allowance beyond reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses.
How old do you have to be to volunteer in Berlin?
It depends on the organisation. Tierheim Berlin sets a minimum age of 18 for all volunteering, and the Berliner Tafel sets 18 for the roles at the Großmarkt. Other organisations set their own limits, so check the specific placement before applying.
What is the Ehrenamtskarte and how do I get it?
It is a joint Berlin and Brandenburg card recognising sustained volunteering, giving discounts at more than 500 partners. You qualify if your volunteering takes place in Berlin, has run for at least a year, amounts to at least 200 hours a year, is continuing, and is unpaid. You apply through the free Ehrenamtskarte app, and the organisation you volunteer with confirms it. There is no legal right to receive it.
Can I volunteer just once instead of every week?
Yes. vostel.de lets you filter for one-off opportunities, Serve the City Berlin runs single projects lasting two to three hours, and Hejmo takes help with one-off events. Regular slots exist too, but nothing forces you to start with one.
What happened to bürgeraktiv?
Berlin’s Senate department for culture and social cohesion has switched the bürgeraktiv portal off. Its content now sits on engagiertes.berlin, and the search for opportunities has moved to the platform run by LAGFA Berlin, the umbrella body for the city’s volunteer agencies.
Can I still walk dogs at the Berlin animal shelter?
Not at the moment. Tierheim Berlin says the level of interest in its dog volunteering means it cannot accept further applications for now, and the same applies to the cat house. It does not keep a waiting list. Fostering and post-adoption follow-up visits remain open. The minimum age is 18 and dog walkers need to commit to at least once a week.
Want to keep reading?
- How to make friends in Berlin — the wider version of this problem.
- Making friends in Berlin without German — what actually works when the language is the wall.
- Social meetup groups in Berlin — the organised, turn-up-and-see route.
- Meeting people in Berlin without drinking — for anyone tired of the bar being the only venue.
- Things to do alone in Berlin — for the weekends in between.
- Moving to Berlin alone — the first three months, honestly.
Where to start this week
If you want the shortest path: open vostel, set the German filter to match your actual German, set frequency to once, and sign up for one thing in the next fortnight. If you want the warmest path: email Serve the City and go to the next Action Day. If you want the most useful path for the city: the Berliner Tafel has a Tuesday evening shift and a chronic need for people who can lift crates.
None of these fix a lonely autumn on their own. What they do is give you a reason to be somewhere, at a fixed time, with the same people — which is the raw material friendship is made of, and the thing this city makes strangely hard to arrange. If that is the part you are stuck on, we wrote about it at length.
Pick one and write the email this week. Then find someone to go with — MITRA is for meeting people nearby who want to do the same thing at the same time. Berlin first, other EU cities on the roadmap. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
More Berlin plans, one a day, on Instagram.
Sources
https://www.berlin.de/ehrenamtskarte/beantragen/
https://www.berlin.de/ehrenamtskarte/informationen/
https://www.berlin.de/sen/kultgz/engagement/artikel.1653913.php
https://www.berliner-tafel.de/helfen/ehrenamt/aktueller-bedarf
https://www.berliner-tafel.de/helfen/ehrenamt/moglichkeiten
https://www.servethecity.berlin/en/volunteer/
https://www.hejmoberlin.org/en/get-involved/volunteers
https://www.hejmoberlin.org/en/projects/open-language-cafes
https://www.berliner-stadtmission.de/ehrenamt
https://www.tierschutz-berlin.de/mitmachen/ehrenamt/
https://www.restlos-gluecklich.berlin/mitmachen
https://vostel.de/en/volunteering-berlin
https://www.lagfa.berlin/
https://berliner-freiwilligenboerse.de/
