One of the most rewarding experiences you can ever have is volunteering. It exposes you to situations you may have not otherwise seen and shows you how fortunate you truly are.
According to The Huffington Post, a few reasons you should volunteer are to make a difference in your community, develop job skills, and explore other interests. One of the greatest qualities about volunteering is that it not only benefits who or what is having the volunteering done for them, but it also benefits the person who is doing the volunteering.
In Libertyville, there are various ways to give back, such as a getting a group of friends to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children, spending a day with the elderly at Winchester House, donating clothes to Goodwill, walking a neighbor’s dog without expecting anything in return, or even doing the dishes for your parents.
“This past fall, I helped out with a program called TOPS. TOPS allows people with disabilities to play soccer and be active. I looked forward to going to the sports complex for TOPS every week. I felt so connected to each and every one of these kids that I was almost as excited as they were to come out and play,” voiced freshman Bridget Horvath.
Volunteering doesn’t need to be an organized group of people working together to help the world; it can be the smallest of actions that changes someone’s life and makes a difference. Just taking a few moments out of your day to make someone smile or even picking up a book that someone dropped is considered “volunteering” because essentially, doing service is simply about helping others. Don’t be hyper focused on joining an organization to do volunteering; you’re capable of doing a little volunteering on your own everyday, and as long as it’s out of the goodness of your own heart, then you’re doing it for all the right reasons.
“It could be writing a letter or setting up a PADS shelter or donating canned foods to the food drive we do here or getting gifts for WISH or serving the meals or bringing the gifts to the cars or things like that. It’s definitely a feel good,” said Mrs. Jennifer Uliks, Student Activities Director at LHS. Who doesn’t feel good when you’re helping others? Because you can see the impact you have on people. And it’s important to know as a volunteer you may not always see the impact that you’ve done. But you have to know in your heart that the person who is receiving that is feeling good and benefiting from the work that you’ve done.”
The feeling you get once you’ve helped someone else is completely indescribable. It’s only something you can gain from experience and is “definitely a feel good” like Mrs. Uliks stated. Just knowing you helped your community or an organization, or even a friend, gives you this type of confidence that you can earn only from volunteering.
Along with the feeling you receive from helping out in the community, volunteering drastically improves job skills. It is one of the best ways to get a hands-on experience of the work you want to pursue when you are older. If you want to be a veterinarian, spend a day working at an animal shelter. Want to be a teacher? See if your local elementary school needs teacher aids to help out for a day. These hands-on experiences will not only expose you to the environments you want to be working in, but they show that you have true interest in your career and that you have received experience in your job of choice, which is a very appealing quality to future employers.
In addition to helping the community and gaining important job skills, volunteering opens you up to exploring new interests and has the ability to spark a multitude of ideas inside of you, only making you want to volunteer more.
“In seventh grade, I noticed that my grandma, who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, wasn’t doing so well. At dinner one night with my family, we discussed how clueless some people are as to the problems in the world. There have been times in everyone’s life, including mine, where I haven’t put others before myself. Realizing this, I wanted to change that. I got home, and I talked with my dad about starting my own charity. He thought it was a great idea. We spent all night brainstorming about all of the details of a charity,” spoke Horvath. After much debate, we decided upon the name ‘Bridge the Gap’. (Bridge, as in my name, and bridging the gap in people’s lives by helping them.),” I sent out a mass email to all of my family members to bring toilet paper, paper towels, and cans of soup to our Thanksgiving dinner so I could then transfer them to the Lake County Haven, a shelter for women and children. So many of my relatives brought goods because they wanted to help. Also, a few of my neighbors and close friends donated to the Haven! When dropping everything off at the Haven, I could tell how appreciative all of them were for these daily products.”
It’s truly amazing how the smallest of experiences can lead up to the biggest of accomplishments in our lives; quality volunteering gives to all of those who try it. For the amount of time you give, you receive an uncountable amount of benefits.
Volunteering is not something that should be looked at as a chore or simply as a boring activity to gain service hours for a college application. Volunteer because you want to make a difference, and you want to feel the satisfaction of knowing that what you did changed someone’s life. Volunteer to not only help your community, but do it for yourself as well; you can only gain and grow from the experience.
“Find something that makes your heart soar. And you’ll find it when it comes to volunteering. If it’s setting up a shelter, if it’s donating food, if it’s wrapping presents, if it’s helping someone shovel their driveway. Find something that speaks to your heart. There’s something out there for everyone to do,” said Mrs. Uliks.
