Why Volunteering is Great!

If you become a volunteer, you will improve your community and at the same time feel rewarded and good about yourself. You will also improve your employability.

Perhaps you are interested in doing something for your community and yourself. Why not take part in a project, do something positive in your neighbourhood, improve your community, and at the same time improve your employability too. Feel rewarded and good about yourself!

One of the reasons for volunteering is to support and help other people. We volunteer because we like to do positive things to help improve our community. This is the most important reason but, is it the only one? We are motivated to start volunteering for different reasons. These could be:

– Supporting and helping a group of people in an organisation through workshops, outdoor activities, sports, lessons, etc.

– Looking after someone by taking them to doctor’s appointments, shopping, going for a walk, to an event, etc.

– Raising money for humanitarian organisations, charities, social events, etc.

– Caring about different issues, the elderly, disabled people, education, animals, the environment, etc.

– Developing and sharing skills and abilities.

– Improving employability.

– Volunteering with projects abroad.

– Gaining new experiences.

– Helping each other.

– Doing a useful and helpful activity for their community.

– Doing a different activity from your job (developing as a person, not just as a professional job).

Volunteer jobs. Why are they beneficial for you?

– You experience real situations that help you to develop personal and professional skills, abilities and knowledge.

– You gain confidence.

– You meet new people and probably people of different age ranges, which means that you will encounter different points of view.

– If you work in a team, then you can share thoughts, impressions and ideas.

A volunteer job could involve care, education, administration, technology, a position in hospitality, or an action that helps to make progress in a social, cultural or educational project.

Some people do not feel confident enough to volunteer because they think they are not qualified to do it or sometimes they think they are not available to attend a weekly activity. Don’t be put off! If you are really motivated, there are hundreds of ways in which you can volunteer! Just think about what you like to do, what you know how to do and what your availability is.

Click here to find suitable volunteer work for you (temporary, virtual, permanent and event-specific positions).

http://www.gumtree.com/search?q=&search_category=volunteer-charity-work-jobs&search_location=&distance=0.0001

http://www.do-it.org.uk

https://www.volunteeredinburgh.org.uk

Here is a video that shows you some thoughts and ideas from volunteers. Their personal and social motivations.  “The Power of Volunteering”. 

Raquel

Employability (noun) is about your ability to get and keep a job. You can increase your employability by expanding and building on your “skill set” (the set of skills and abilities that you have).

To raise means to increase the amount of something. Common collocations in the voluntary sector are “raise money” and “raise awareness (of an issue)”. You can also raise a concern. We also use “raise” when talking about parents nurturing their children. Children grow, plants grow, but parents don’t grow children. They “bring them up” or “raise” them.

Experience. Verbs that go with experience are gain experience, have an experience, enjoy an experience, go through an experience. It can be countable and uncountable.

To “encounter” something is to find something or meet someone unexpectedly. It is quite a formal word, so you can use the phrasal verb “come across” instead. “I came across an interested article on the internet the other day.”

Be put off. A great phrasal verb meaning to be discouraged. “My son told me he wanted to buy a motorbike the other day so I did everything I did to put him off.” I wanted to go on holiday to Morocco but I was put off by the hot weather.