By Sam Ast, Re-Entry Workforce Development Specialist, Goodwill of Western Missouri & Eastern Kansas
When it comes to volunteering, you likely have a lot of questions. How can you get involved? What are the benefits to yourself and those around you? We want to help demystify volunteerism and explain how it can be used as a strategy not only for finding paid work but also for meeting new people and learning relevant skills.
Self-Care and Volunteering
To begin, donating your time and energy toward efforts to help others and better the community will always be commendable. However, not everyone is in a place to help all the time. You must take care of yourself before attempting to take care of somebody else. Volunteer opportunities will always be around, so when you’re able to, feel free to join any of the helpful endeavors across your city without any shame, hesitance, guilt or anxiety. You will be appreciated whenever you show up. Visit your closest local Goodwill to find out more about volunteer opportunities!
Benefits of Volunteering
Although giving back is most often a selfless act, there are many tangible benefits that come as a result. For starters, if you aren’t currently working, volunteer efforts are a great way to stay busy. Everyone knows looking for work is work—if you’re doing it right. But not everyone would agree it keeps them occupied all day. It is likely you still have some free time on your hands.
It can also be a tricky act to explain away gaps on your résumé. Working in your community, without a profit motive, looks great to employers who’d like to see that you have not let time out of the workforce equate to actual time off. Spending a few nights per week walking dogs at your local shelter or serving meals to the hungry is an extremely solid way to show hard work, kindness and motivation.
Keep these points in mind if you need any extra motivation to engage in community service.
Volunteering and Personal Improvement
Individual improvement is made possible by surrounding yourself with, and learning from, those experienced at completing specific tasks. A dogwalker might need to learn the policies of the shelter, techniques for avoiding dangerous situations with aggressive dogs or how to treat bite wounds. A soup kitchen worker might need to learn new ways to resolve conflict or practice de-escalation while dealing with unhappy diners. A Goodwill® donations worker could find new ways to organize, sort, fold or greet people.
To be clear, you do not have to be an expert in the area you want to lend your support to. In fact, most of the time you will know the least. Nevertheless, this presents a great opportunity for you to research new ideas and topics, and further your education in various fields that might offer you paid work in the future.
Where to Find Volunteer Opportunities
For volunteer opportunities, look to see if your local Goodwill organization, shelter, food bank, religious organizations or city/county government have any opportunities for you to provide a helping hand. See if there are programs at nearby non-profits that could use your help, too. Don’t sell yourself short; you have a lot to offer those you meet and work with.
Support Your Community
Keeping busy through volunteering can help you stay out of trouble, improve your mental health, inspire you to set goals, excite you about learning new things and provide you with a great opportunity to network. Utilizing these suggestions will help to strengthen your position in the workforce and increase your base of knowledge.
Check out this blog again throughout the coming months for more career and job advice.
