Overview:
- What is volunteering and its benefits?
- Volunteering role in choosing careers
- Volunteering impact on our paths and lives
- The valuable experience of volunteering
What Is Volunteering? And What Are the Benefits?
Volunteering can be best described as “selfless service.” A volunteer offers their time, abilities, and energy to benefit others. Doing this kind of heart-centered work can help someone feel connected to something bigger than themself. By supporting a group or organization that in turn promotes the health and wellness of individuals and groups, the volunteer is part of something that does active good.
Whether feeding the homeless, caring for shelter animals, or keeping lonely senior citizens company, volunteers participate in a movement that seeks to improve and advance the health, vitality, and wellness of different communities.
Volunteering is an excellent way for someone to find out what interests them and makes them come alive. Do they like working with children? With animals? Helping the environment? Does spending an afternoon with like-minded people gathering signatures to encourage the passing of green laws and ordinances make them feel satisfied and fulfilled?
Sometimes, the work might seem small, but the benefits can be huge. For instance, dedicating a few hours to picking up litter keeps trash and debris from entering storm drains and being carried out to sea. It keeps oceanic life from consuming plastic and preserves our ecosystems, which supports everyone.
Volunteering Can Help in Making Better Career Choices
If a person has a vocation in mind that they think they might want to enter but are unsure about, volunteering can be an excellent way to gain some experience in the field. If someone is wondering about healthcare, for example, they could look into volunteering opportunities at hospitals or senior centers to spend time around doctors, nurses, and patients.
If they are considering an environmental job, they can check with state or national parks or even local communities for available positions and understand the day-to-day work there. If they are interested in possibly becoming a veterinarian, animal shelters welcome help with tasks such as keeping their spaces clean and the animals healthy and happy.
A local zoo might need volunteers to serve as guides and help entertain the animals. Volunteering can greatly facilitate making informed decisions about pursuing programs or certificates to advance one’s knowledge and professional standing.
Being a volunteer lets people explore new interests or dive deeper into an established one, and it can be a valuable entree to a new chapter of life. Organizations that take volunteers also need paid employees. By being a dependable and regular volunteer, a person might attract the attention of managers or supervisors who could ultimately hire them.
At the very least, if a person distinguishes themself as a loyal volunteer, they can request advice or letters of reference when seeking employment.
Volunteering Influences One’s Life Path?
How one choice might impact a person’s life is unpredictable. People often meet their best friends or spouses at work. Imagine whom one could meet while volunteering! In their early twenties, one of our writers was a volunteer with WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), through which she went to Italy to work on small farms in exchange for room and board.
At one of her last stays, she met a young man who told her about a college in the United States she had never heard of before. The young lady ended up attending this liberal arts college, which had its own working farm. Because of her volunteer experience, she became a valued member of the farm’s student team. And one of her friends from school ended up becoming her husband!
Volunteering Offers Valuable and Translatable Experience
While volunteering, one can learn many new things, such as technical skills, communication practices, logistics, hospitality, how to work with mechanics, and how to manage inventory. A person might also learn about a different culture, meet dozens of people, and become skilled at getting along with strangers—who could eventually become friends.
Volunteering can be a valuable addition to one’s résumé, too. In fact, volunteering is a kind of purpose-driven internship. Working for free to support a community or cause shows how much one cares and how willing one is to put their time and energy into making a positive impact.
Volunteering Improves Lives
Volunteering helps people develop into individuals who are compassionate, hardworking, and generous.
If someone wants to actively help make a difference in the world, rather than just talking about doing so, becoming a volunteer is a wonderful way to get started. It’s empowering, educational, and empathetic. Giving freely to assist others integrates the volunteer into a larger community and gives them a sense of connectedness they might not have known they were missing.
You can volunteer both close to home and abroad. People everywhere can benefit from this kind of support. Here are some options to consider for volunteering:
- After-school programs
- Animal shelters/rescue centers
- Environmental cleanups
- Food pantries
- Hospitals
- Libraries
- Museums
- National parks
- Nonprofits
- Preservation efforts
- Senior centers
- The Red Cross
- Wildlife sanctuaries
Volunteering Can Make a Transcending Impact
Volunteering can provide a path forward to a new career, hobby, or lifestyle. Trying something new can radically change a person’s life or outlook. Knowing how big an effect a volunteer can have is impossible. Their smile at a senior center could keep an elderly person from sinking into depression.
Their service at a food pantry could keep a family fed and give kids the energy they need to be alert and attentive in school. Their time picking up garbage could keep a sea turtle from dying from a belly full of plastic. Volunteering leads to intangible benefits for the community, which is highly needed.
When someone puts themself out there, learns something new, and gives back, that is a wonderful and pure example of volunteering. As is said, what goes around comes around, and if more people exude positivity, helpful energy, and loving work, more will come back our way.
Volunteering could connect a person to a new group of good friends, a mentor, or even their future spouse! If we want to make the world a better place, it is something we—everyone—can do now, to change lives one person at a time. The possibilities are endless.
Conclusion:
Start Volunteering!
If you want to thrive, connect with others on a profound level, lead a meaningful life, and broaden your horizons, then it’s time for you to embark on your own journey of growth and kindness. Seize every chance to join a non-profit project, and observe your life transform in unexpected ways.
