Whether you do it for personal enjoyment, for the resume, or for school, volunteering is all about helping give back to your community. That’s why it’s also called community service.
But what does volunteering do for you? Apart from perhaps filling some gaps in your resume, giving you something to do with your time, and a few numbers on a spreadsheet for your school credits, volunteering can have some major impacts on your life. In this article, I will be discussing the 3 main benefits youth get from volunteering. I’ve noticed these in both my own life and from talking to other volunteers!
1. New Life Skills
Volunteering often exposes us to new experiences, and it forces us to learn skills quickly and professionally. Often times, it’s things like manual labour or running repetitive tasks with children.
Learning these skills applies to both complex tasks and simple ones. For example, there was one time where I was volunteering with a group at a soup kitchen, where another volunteer and I were tasked with peeling boiled eggs. To my surprise, the other volunteer had never peeled a boiled egg in their life! They had to learn fast from the line cooks how to peel a boiled egg efficiently, and then had to peel about one hundred eggs. Needless to say, they got the hang of it within 10 minutes (around the 10 egg mark) and learned a pretty basic life skill.
An example of learning a more complex skill would be a time I volunteered at a senior home. The volunteers were of very diverse backgrounds, which may have been new for the seniors, and we encountered a few uncomfortable comments. We had to learn on the spot how to manage these comments, divert the attention away from an undesirable conversation, and also learn to empathize with the seniors who hadn’t received the same education and exposure that we did.
It depends on where you’re volunteering, but I have learned something new at every project I’ve been to and I’m sure you will too! Here are some other skills I’ve learned personally:
- the art of gift wrapping
- how to operate a commercial dishwasher
- empathy with someone you disagree with
- making conversation and small talk
- to serve tea
- to make sandwiches: grilled cheese, ham and cheese, tuna salad, and egg salad
- closing plastic Easter eggs in the cold
- crowd management
- managing unhappy crowds of people
- dancing
- singing
2. Sense of Gratitude and Understanding
Volunteering is also a form of charity. You are lending your effort and your time without directly expecting anything back, and it makes more sense that others should be grateful for you, right?
Well, not really.
A lot of the time you are volunteering with or for vulnerable groups, you will be hit with an overwhelming sense of empathy and gratitude for what you have. Sometimes, this is when volunteers truly gain a sense of how much they have, and how much they have taken for granted. Volunteering can also eradicate some unconscious biases.
A personal example of when this happened to me was when I first volunteered at a project with seniors. Prior to volunteering, I hadn’t really thought about what seniors did in their free time, or even really why I had chosen to volunteer there. What would be fun about trying to weave some awkward small talk with some older person about their lives and how they best liked to play bingo?
Throughout the project though, these thoughts quickly changed. Initially for some reason, I had thought that the elderly had been elderly their entire lives. As I talked more with the seniors, I realized that my life wasn’t too different from theirs. When they were younger, they had wild ambitions and big dreams too. They told me about things that they wish they had done before age had taken some of their physical health away. They described their lives in the nursing home, and that’s when I realized that someday, I’d also be in their place. Everyone ages, right?
It made me think about how much I am capable of right now, and how much potential I have. The number of things I haven’t done and what I wish to do before I age past the point where my body can’t do these things anymore. I gained a sense of gratitude for all that I have now, and I reshaped my thoughts about the future. It really changed my values and the way I see my life today.
3. New Connections
Volunteering, at least in my experience, has always been with new people. Whether it be the other volunteers that you’re working with, the Youth Central team leader, the event organizers, or the cause that you’re working for, there’s always new people to be met.
If you think about it, volunteering is a form of networking. You can meet a lot of new people interested in the same things that you’re interested in, and you can learn a lot about the field that you may want to work in. Essentially, you will meet like-minded people and experts in the field that you’re volunteering in.
I’ve met a lot of friends through volunteering, many of whom I continue to interact with and speak to on a daily basis. I’ve met some of my closest friends through volunteering, and I’ve also worked myself into networking among those in the career field that I’m interested in. Through these people, I’ve learned a lot about what my life might look like if I take different paths in life.
In general, forming new connections is a great way to learn about your interests through others’ experiences and can be ultimately so beneficial.
TL;DR
Volunteering, regardless of your intentions, has a lot of benefits for everyone involved. Some of these benefits include learning basic life skills, gaining a new sense of empathy and gratitude, and forming new connections with others. It’s also a very productive way to spend time to help others in need!