How Community Service Impacts More Than Just The 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 greatly affects your community, and this is a very common fact. Why not take a few parts of you time to make the community a better place to live in? Volunteering a few hours a month can make a huge difference even with a small amount of time that is invested. Events such as park and street cleanups, local school projects, serving food at a shelter or working at your local food pantry, helping with youth activities, and more are some of the volunteering activities today. Even if you just have an hour each week to give, this truly makes a big impact.

Your share in the volunteering work becomes exemplary to others. Not only are you making a huge difference with the community, but this also inspires your family and friends to volunteer. If you have children, you can use this opportunity to teach them about the importance and the fun of volunteerism. It is a good idea to find a volunteer opportunity that allows children to take part in such service. At a very early age, they will be able to grasp the idea that giving back is not only the right thing to do, but also helping others and the environment can create a better future for everyone. You also can create group volunteer events and invite your friends and ask them to participate. Social media is a very powerful tool that can be used to invite friends to join in and also spread the word throughout the community.

Depending on your schedule, several companies today are offering some workplace volunteer programs that allow their employees to spend a certain amount of hours per month that are approved during work hours. Why not spend such time to the community for the better good? The company is paying you for such tasks which make it advantageous for your family and friends to partake in such events to make to the most use of their time. If your company is not offering such volunteer program, then you might want to inquire about it from your management to help you get started.

Volunteerism has a lot of perks like enhancing your skills and helping you gain more experience. This is perhaps one of the most important reasons to volunteer that others may fail to realize. You probably have noticed terms about volunteering such as "micro-volunteering" or "skills-based volunteering." These new concepts proved to be most valuable to volunteers and organizations. Micro-volunteering primarily focuses on dividing volunteer hours in small increments of time and utilizing the skills that you possess (often gained from work experience).

For example, many nonprofits do not have in-house web designers. If you are a web designer, your skills are in high demand. Taking time to volunteer every couple of weeks for a few hours and applying your design skills to an organization in need will have a huge impact for only a small commitment of your time. Not only will the organization benefit from it, but you will also gain additional experience by honing your skills. For freelance web designers, this is a great opportunity to do some pro-bono work that could potentially lead to a long-term contract with the organization once they see how well you do volunteering.




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