Working bee

Chiefly an Australian and New Zealand term. A working bee is a volunteer work session where people gather to do practical jobs together for a school, club, charity, or community project.

The shape of the event is familiar in the UK even if the label is not. A school grounds tidy-up, church maintenance morning, village-hall clean-up, or charity-shop sorting session may look exactly like a working bee in practice, but UK organisations usually describe the event more plainly instead of relying on one fixed term.

For a UK reader, the useful takeaway is that a working bee is practical, collective, and time-bounded. It is closer to a volunteer work day than to an ongoing rota role.