Community Service: It Helps More Than Your Community

By Sebastian Troup


Community service is that "feel good" activity that many want to accomplish, but don't always make the time for. With everyone so busy with family and work, it is sometimes tough to make volunteering a priority. Here are several reasons why volunteering is more than just an opportunity to feel good about yourself and is actually a valuable use of your time.

Community service improves your community, and this is the most obvious reason. Why not take the time to make the community that you live in better? Simply by volunteering a few hours a month, you can have a huge impact with just a small investment of your time. Volunteer activities can include events such as park and street cleanups, local school projects, serving food at your local food pantry, helping with youth activities, and more. Volunteering in these activities will have high returns where it matters most to you and your family.

You'll become an example yourself when you do volunteering. Volunteering not only affects the greater community, but also directly impacts your family and friends. If you have kids, it becomes a great building block in teaching and mentoring them. If possible, find volunteer opportunities that encourage kids to participate so that you they can volunteer and help also. This will mold them to see that giving back is not only the right thing to do, but assisting others and the environment is a great investment for the years to come. This is also a nice chance to call you friends and invite them to participate by creating group volunteer events which can make an even bigger impact. The ever so popular social media makes it quite easy to organize group volunteering that can spread quite fast across the networks and as a result, will create a positive feedback not only on the volunteer experience and organization but also for you and your friends.

A lot of companies today are offering some sort of workplace volunteer program that allows you to volunteer a certain amount of hours per month depending on your schedule that are approved during work hours. If given a chance, why not use this time for the better good of the community? This is a free time that the company is paying you for, so this is a good advantage to invite family and friends to partake in group activities during work hours to make the most use of their time. Inquire to your management if your company does not have a workplace volunteer program to help you get started.

The benefits of volunteerism are too many to mention though most of them enhance your skills and help you gain more experience. This by far, is one of the most noteworthy reasons to volunteer that others may not realize yet. Volunteering terms such as "micro-volunteering" are becoming well known simply because companies, volunteers and organizations all benefit greatly from this concept. What it all boils down to is that micro-volunteering allows employees to dedicate small amounts of time to a cause and also donate time that utilizes and enhances their current set of skills.

For instance, there are many nonprofits that don't have in-house web designers. There is a constant need for web designers and if you are a web designer yourself, you are in high demand. You can give a huge impact to the community by spending a few hours of your time in volunteering for couple of weeks and sharing your insights and skills to an organization. You can hone your skills and gain additional experience while at the same time the organization can benefit greatly from it. This is a great opportunity for freelance web designers to do some professional work that could lead to a long-term career and contract with the organization once they see how well you do volunteering.




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