Can young people (under 13s) volunteer through Be Collective?
Yes. Be Collective provides an online environment for under 13s to join the platform and find age-appropriate volunteer opportunities, with parent or guardian consent.
Can I sign up my child to Be Collective?
All users under 13 need parent or guardian consent to join. If an under 13 attempts to sign up, they will be asked for a parent or guardian email address.
If you are the parent or guardian, you will receive an email prompting you to sign up to Be Collective.
Once you have joined, create a family group and add the child with their name, email address, and date of birth. This creates an account for the child and emails them to activate it. A child user must be under 13.
After you create a family group, a My family group tab appears on your profile dashboard. From there you can review members, add new members, and monitor child users' activity.
Can I add a child over 13 to my family group?
Yes. Users over 13 can see all youth-accessible opportunities on Be Collective and do not need your approval to join groups or apply for volunteer opportunities.
What can a child user see and do on Be Collective?
When a user is not logged in, all public opportunities are viewable. Once logged in, under 13 users cannot view or apply for opportunities with a minimum age restriction they do not meet — they only see opportunities flagged as appropriate for their age by the organisations listing them.
A child user can apply for any opportunity they have access to. As the parent or guardian, you will receive an email and online notification requesting consent. The application is not sent to the organisation until you have reviewed the opportunity and provided consent.
In-platform messaging is heavily restricted for underage users.
Can I apply to an opportunity on behalf of a child?
No. You can use an email address you and your child share to set up their Be Collective account. Email addresses used to join Be Collective must be unique.
What happens when a child user reaches their 13th birthday?
They no longer need parent or guardian approval through My family group to interact with groups through applications or messages. Until 18, they are still limited to youth-accessible opportunities.