For many people, volunteering is something they’d consider about four times before doing. You might ask why you’d want to volunteer without getting something in return when you’re spending your time, talents, knowledge, and occasionally money! Well, we, like all other living creatures, enjoy being rewarded for our work.
But did you realize that chipping in accompanies has an incredible number of remunerations which are very much like unreservedly benefiting yourself for charitable effort? These advantages come generally free of charge, are enduring and you might convey them any place you go. And how? Well, this article will go through a couple of those advantages to sum things up.
Connection? Yes!
Firstly, apply to be a volunteer in your first attempt to make connections with the people or organization you are to work with. Then there are the connections you will make with the individual people you will meet. How you start making connections is very important, be genuine. take interest to know someone, people will know when you have no care to know who they are as people.
Be of great help, everyone needs help from time to time and you being there to help shows how reliable you can be. This makes the next person more interested in connecting with you. After all, what is volunteer work if not for genuine massive help?
Have persistence, if the first try doesn’t work out, try again. That way people know you are serious about making connections, Just do not be rushed about it.
Lastly, you make connections by being closer to someone who is closer to someone you wish to connect to. In many cases, this is how many people land their first jobs through connections and referrals, as you come already with people already trusting you.
Personal growth
Personal growth might be portrayed as the process through which a person recognizes himself or herself to continuously reach his or her full potential in terms of maturity, success, and happiness.
As a volunteer, your sentiments, understandings, and methods of thought get well-reversed. You can figure out how to foster compassion for individuals or you just get a new “coat of thick skin”. And you know what? This is a start to become stronger to day-to-day existence stresses. By developing personally, you become someone who is rooted in values that’ll leadingly benefit you and the people around you. Not to mention, as a person, you become more defined, and people can identify you based on your actions and accomplishments.
Enlightenment
Often when volunteering you’re required to avail your time, skills, and knowledge and you might think that there’s nothing new for you to learn. Yet, from a volunteer’s perspective, there’s always a lot to learn and achieve. Wherever there’s an interaction of people, there’s education/learning taking place. Some volunteer work requires you to undergo a pre-training process before you can start with the actual volunteering. And this can be regarded as a form of education as to how it’s rendered to the volunteer may be formal or informal according to the volunteer work being done.
Experience
Experience is something we all need for us to ease out our everyday personal to career life. Sometimes it is difficult to just go out there and meet new people or try out new ideas because one does not have the experience and is more doubtful of the outcome. Volunteering is a safer way to gain interpersonal skills and improve through experience. This allows you to interact more effectively with friends, family, or work colleagues and the general community at large.
Volunteer work comes with many challenges, some of which are not present in the day-paid work environment. Being exposed to such experiences allows you to have more ways to approach challenges in your daily life. Besides, more challenges mean more experience, and that, in turn, makes you more critical in your thought process. You are more self-confident in the decisions you make.
You are experienced enough to respect diversity, as often volunteering will mean you being exposed to diverse situations and people. This will in turn affect the way you react to diversity positively as you are more able to communicate effectively, have empathy.
Self-awareness is the thing that affects the way you treat yourself and think of yourself. Experience makes you more self-aware. You are able to pinpoint negative parts of yourself and acknowledge when you need outside help.
Creating something of value in people, that could be helping someone else build a better character, By being a mentor to a friend or younger family member or taking up a leadership position in community decision making
Mentorship
When volunteering, it is either you volunteer as a mentor or a mentee. In the case that you volunteer as a mentor, here are a few benefits. Firstly, improved leadership skills. Everyone is a leader one way or the other. Mentoring improves the way you lead others and that just doesn’t apply to a professional setting only but extends to the family as well.
Secondly, you develop your own confidence and self-esteem from providing support to another as it requires great intrinsic motivation to even start volunteering. It rewards you with greater self-confidence and self-esteem.
If you are someone jumping into volunteer work with little to no experience chances are that you will have a mentor to guide you step by step, which is good. You are a volunteer because you want to make a change, you want to learn, or you are in it for the experience. Mentors are there to make the learning experience bearable. Mentors bring you life lessons that you do not really have to go through to learn. Having a mentor is like having a “speed run” to life.
If you are interested to know more about the importance of volunteering and want to find out the right volunteering opportunities, click here.
