Keeping our temple clean and green.
One of the most popular volunteer roles at the temple is helping to clean up. There are three levels of participation:
- Bi-annual temple cleaning (usually in Nov and Apr/May),
- Area cleaning before, during, and after events (about once in two months)
- Regular/daily cleaning and gardening.

The roles are mainly divided by areas, such as the washrooms, indoor areas (like dana hall, meditation hall, main shrine, classrooms) and outdoor grounds.

We are also in need of help to maintain temple facilities, such as plumbing and electrical jobs.

During events at the temple, volunteers prepare floral arrangements such as for decoration in front of the Buddha statue or for devotees to offer or use for circumambulation.

Lay attendants may support the monks directly during some activities. Certain roles are limited to male volunteers only, as monks of the Thai tradition avoid close physical proximity, contact, and being alone with female devotees.

There are two main levels of participation. During events, lay volunteers may set up for the ceremony (e.g. offerings, seating arrangement). On occasions where there is an alms round within the temple premises, the monks will need to empty their bowls into bags carried by male volunteers, the collected items will then need to be sorted.

On a regular basis, volunteers (especially those who drive and have vehicles) are welcome to help with the monks' daily alms round taking place in neighbouring locations in the East of Singapore. These are male volunteers, or ladies accompanied by male volunteers.

You are welcome to volunteer to set up, run and maintain Audio-visual equipment at the temple during special events such as talks, and festivals, or regular events such as the daily morning and evening chanting sessions and Sunday meal offerings.

We also welcome volunteers interested to emcee or lead chanting ceremonies.

For those who prefer to volunteer remotely and flexibly, this might just be the role for you. Besides maintaining the website and social media platforms, the communications team also aspires towards creating new content, such as videos. We are looking for writers, translators (English to Chinese), graphic designers, photo archivists, and video editors. The team will work with other teams to support their communication requirements, which involves publicity and informational posters for festivals.

We also welcome event videographers in particular, as well as photographers.

These volunteers aspire to engage, facilitate, and support the other volunteers at Palelai, such as by organising cohesion activities, and seeing to the volunteers' welfare during events. At major festivals, volunteers may help with setting-up and managing a booth and display to introduce and explain "service dana" or volunteering at the temple to other devotees.

Palelai volunteers have been running a Children's Dhamma class held every Sunday, annually from January to October.

Volunteers may help with running annual events, such as enrolment day, Vesak day, children's day, and during outing and field trips.

Seasoned volunteers may then grow to becoming teaching assistants, or aspire towards becoming a teacher themselves.

Palelai publishes free distribution Dhamma books and receives donations of books from associated organisations (especially of teachings relevant to the Thai Forest tradition). Volunteers may help with keeping stock of the free distribution books, as well as tidying and replenishing the free distribution bookshelves located in the Arahants' hall.

During Vesak day, a booth is set-up to introduce books to interested devotees. Volunteers, especially those familiar with the publications, are welcome to help here.

On Vesak day, there are various ceremonious "stations" that require set up and maintaining. Volunteers are welcome to help set up and manage the stations, especially to usher the traffic of the devotees as they queue for each station.

This volunteer role is during major events at the temple, namely, Vesak and Kathina day. Volunteers are needed to help direct motor traffic and usher visitors (especially elderly) to ensure orderliness and safety for the community. We also welcome volunteers with first-aid experience to provide medical assistance in case of any emergency during major festivals (Vesak and Kathina day).

Palelai hosts meditation retreats regularly, and volunteers are welcome to support their smooth running, which includes setting up the meditation hall, registering the retreatants and seeing to their meals and welfare.

Male and female retreatant coordinators are welcome to help manage the respective accommodations and to facilitate clean up.

Other roles include: emcees, chanting leaders, AV team for sound system and sound/video recording or live-streaming.

Like in most Thai Buddhist monasteries, the laity helps with preparing the meals to be offered to the monastics. On a daily basis, the volunteers perform roles such as ingredient preparation, cooking, fruits cutting, setting the table, making the offering, and clean up, for both breakfast (6 am) and lunch (10.45 am).

The food collected from the daily almsround is also laid out for the lunch offering, and the laity are allowed to partake in lunch together thereafter.

For special festivals, such as Vesak and Kathina, volunteers can help with the free distribution of food to devotees.

Volunteers on the financial donation team help with the donation counters and issuance of receipts and fundraising items on a daily/regular basis. During events, they help to tally the collections and accounting. This team accepts new volunteers by referral only. Let us become more familiar by volunteering in other roles first.

There are some committees at Palelai that help to plan the activities and operations at the temple, they are the Palelai Volunteer & Communications (PVC), the Events committee, Facilities committee, and Management committee.

Most committees accept seasoned volunteers by referral only, as familiarity with temple operations is required for the job.

The PVC, however, welcomes those who are looking to expand their casual volunteering roles to join and learn more about the temple.

It will be great if you have prior experience in the service area but don’t be afraid to start somewhere. Just ask if a seasoned volunteer is available to help you with orientation and some training, he/she may also be able to direct you to relevant resources/references if they are available.

As mentioned earlier in the Issatha Sutta. It is not so much a matter of what exactly the role requires us to do, but more of the fact that a gift of time and effort has been made.

We suggest not to overcommit yourself at the beginning but you can start with one of the jobs listed and then rotate elsewhere as your interests take you.

There are various kinds of jobs to suit your schedule and commitments:

• Weekly
• Monthly 
• Annual (events based)
• Once-off events

Technically everything is non-obligatory and there is no minimum commitment, but we appreciate volunteers that can undertake the job’s duration to help with manpower planning.

It will be helpful to mention upfront on your availability period:

• For daily tasks, it will be helpful if you can commit to about minimally a week or two.
• For weekly tasks, commit to about minimally a month.
• Or you can speak with someone from the Palelai Voluntary Committee on what role might suit your schedule.
• Last minute withdrawals may result in other volunteers being activated to replace one’s assigned duties on short notice, so we do wish to avoid such situations.

In the Vinaya (the monastic discipline laid down by the Buddha), there are several rules that concern a monk maintaining appropriate distance from women in order to facilitate their renunciation of the world, restraint of the senses, and leading of a celibate life. Generally, in the Thai Theravada tradition, monks are not allowed to receive offerings and items from women directly into their hands, in order to maintain that appropriate distance.

Thus, in order to honour the Vinaya and the customs of the Thai Theravada tradition, certain volunteer roles that entail close proximity with the Sangha (driving them for pindapata, taking and passing items directly into their hands, any private, one-to-one conversations, etc.) are suitable for male devotees, or male-accompanied female devotees only.

This is all to ensure that the Sangha remains beyond reproach, gossip, and misunderstanding – and hence, inspire trust and faith in the laity.