In Australia, volunteer ‘mob’ helps local nonprofits

Sustainable farms may be able to enjoy the help of Crop Mobs in getting serious work done, but now nonprofits and community groups in Perth, Australia, have helping hands all their own to call upon. Big Help Mob is a 100-strong group of able young volunteers who team up on occasion to lend their numerous helping hands to local good causes. A project of volunteering-focused Youth Tree, Big Help Mob might spend one day planting 10,000 trees in a few hours, and then the next renovating a community centre or cleaning up a place that’s long been forgotten, for example. Once the task at hand has been accomplished, Big Help Mob celebrates with “enormous, ridiculous flash mobs in public, using our superpowers to draw attention to good causes that need it,” in the site’s own words. Last month, a morning mission included performing general maintenance and repairs at People Who Care, a local nonprofit; after lunch, the group set out to cheer commuters who use Perth’s public transport system. Big Help Mob is open to participants aged 15 to 30. Hear that rumbling in the distance? It’s the sound of a new volunteer-mob trend emerging, fueled in large part by the generosity-minded masses of Generation G. How much could your brand or social organization accomplish by sponsoring or operating a local mob of your very own…? (Related: Boosting suburban farms.) Spotted by Holly Hyder