On volunteering
Read time: 7 minutes
Volunteering refers to the act of non-individualistic commitment to greater cause than simply yourself.
The act of volunteering does not only show your eagerness to contribute towards the projects that shall push humanity forward as a whole, it also tickles your sense of longing for community, for real connection, for what your life stands for.
Nevertheless, how does volunteering actually look like?
What is volunteering?
Volunteering may take many forms:
Taking part in an event;
Donating your time to train a local team;
Spending your Saturday cleaning the beach;
High-fiving passerby’s marathoners;
Volunteering can take any form.
The only thing that matters is that you care.
It is important to see you are just a droplet in the ocean we call humanity, yet drop by drop, we create the ocean.
Without you and your contribution, we have no ocean.
With your contribution, humanity shall become this much better off.
Not everything in this world is about money.
You SHOULD NOT quantify humanity in a monetary currency.
Volunteering means opening up to experiences, people, opportunities, and life philosophies, new perspectives on the old and wild creativity to the conservative.
How you can benefit
People choose to volunteer for a variety of reasons.
For some it offers the chance to give something back to the community or make a difference to the people around them.
For others it provides an opportunity to develop new skills or build on existing experience and knowledge.
We may volunteer in order to:
1. Have working experience
Most volunteering environments are not proper work environments, yet volunteering mostly counts towards working experience.
Proving that you spent weeks and months helping out a community, that you actively worked as a team, that you were able to have a coordinated effort, can greatly impact how you are viewed by an employer.
Most volunteering spots require some kind of real life work to be done (Graphic illustrations, project management, pitching, selling, etc.)
2. Have fun
Whenever I volunteered for something, the atmosphere was always lighthearted, relaxed with a touch of friendliness, or even family.
Volunteering events and organizations are a great place to let your guard down every once in a while and just have a laugh while making your contribution.
3. Network
For me, the connections and the lists of people I knew at the event, the network that is built little by little is extremely valuable.
Firstly, they are the people that have some or more of your interests.
Secondly, you have already interacted and worked on a common goal with those people, so you are much more likely to get their trust.
Thirdly, as an adult it is pretty hard to make new friends. Volunteering can help connect the group and can help all of you be just a little bit friendlier than normal.
Lastly, it is a great spot to meet the sex you are attracted to. Just saying ;)
4. Find fulfillment
I believe its common knowledge that volunteering offers physical and mental rewards.
It is an extremely important part of your health.
Putting others first, doing work while expecting nothing in return, helping others even when you feel are helpless can combat the following:
-stress;
-anger;
-anxiety;
-depression;
-lack of self-confidence;
-lack of purpose;
How others can benefit
I think it is pretty simple to think about how your energy and effort could contribute towards helping others.
The really important thing that we all should make is to remember that what we do DOES matter.
We have to remember that any effort towards a cause does help out that cause.
Any little bit of effort combined with other little bits of effort contribute towards the real change we see in the world.
I think more than anything, I want to get the point across that you do not only matter, but that your contribution is absolutely vital.
"Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.
Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!"” - The Starfish Story: one step towards changing the world by Loren Eiseley
Do not wait. Now is the time to help.
Now is the time to try and to change the small corner of the world made up by the community around you.