Climate change risk is mostly and often unfairly cast upon those who are vulnerable. This paper and its findings address the role, strength and limitations of voluntary actions as a means of reducing human vulnerability to climate change. The paper introduces various types of voluntary activities such as awareness raising, community mobilization and empowerment, community-based adaptation and mitigation, and voluntary environmental regulations and schemes. Such a bottom-‘wide’ approach to climate change is closely linked with civil environmentalism with broad focus and also scientifically strengthened by its engagement with civic science. It urges shifting the mind-set of international development agencies to flexibly accommodate and maximize the potential of voluntary, bottom-wide actions in combating climate change. Finally, the paper lists out pieces of recommendation to further improve and fully utilize voluntary actions in reducing vulnerability on the ground, by emphasizing long-term orientation, capacity development, monitoring and evaluation and building partnerships at the local level.