The Benefits of Volunteering: Enhancing Skills Development while Helping Individuals and the Community
It can be difficult to balance academic studies with prioritising your physical and mental health as a university student – and, on top of this, a lot of students are also trying to find relevant work experience that will set them apart from other graduates. One simple and fun way to help create a more balanced student life and help to launch you towards a post-graduate career is through volunteering.
Volunteering helps students to enhance their CV, widen their community and put their mental health first, making their university experience even more fulfilling. Here’s a look at just a few of the many benefits to volunteering, both for individuals and the community.
Enhancing Your CV
Experiencing New Sectors: When students think about volunteering, often they think about bake sales and working in charity shops. While these experiences give you invaluable skills, volunteering is so much more than this. Volunteers can work in marketing, events planning, fundraising, administration, community outreach assistants, bookkeepers, graphic designers and more.
Learning New Skills: Careers advisors often talk about “buzz words” in CVs like comunication, teamwork and public speaking. Volunteering is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the use of these skills on a CV. If you’ve worked with a group of people, you’ve demonstrated team work; if you’ve handed out flyers, you can confidently say you have experience in public speaking – the opportunities are endless!
Demonstrating Your Commitment: One of the main things employers look for is a candidate’s willingness to commit to a role. Volunteering is the perfect way to show this commitment. Whether you’ve worked with an organisation for years or you’ve worked on one event, you’ve seen a project through to the end, and this instantly makes you more employable.
Skills Development
Leadership Skills: Volunteering involves running fundraising events, completing tasks to improve the local community with your peers and talking to the public about the cause you’re supporting; all of these things involve forms of leadership and look great on your resume.
Teamwork: All volunteering initiatives are nothing without the teams that support them. Being part of a team of volunteers is a great way to develop your ability to collaborate and work with others.
Public Speaking: Public speaking can involve giving a speech in front of a large crowd, but it can also happen on a small scale, when you’re flyering in Lancaster to inform people about an upcoming charity event. Any communication between yourself and members of the public where you’re relaying information about the organisation you’re supporting can be used as evidence for your public speaking skills.
Creativity and Problem Solving: No matter where you’re volunteering, something will always not go according to plan – that’s the nature of the job! You might not have enough tables for an event, or the wrong date has been sent out on an email, or a social media schedule has not been followed. Small setbacks like these are a great way to practice thinking creatively, remaining calm when things go wrong and be able to problem solve effectively.
Improving physical and mental health
Part of a Larger Community: Volunteering can prevent you from feeling isolated if you’re living away from home at university, and allows you to meet people who care about the same things as you do. More than 80 per cent of the Royal Voluntary Serice say that their voluntary work has improved their mental health.
Keeping You Mentally Stimulated: Volunteering often means never having the same day twice; so in a period where your schedule involves a lot of independent learning, volunteering opportunities can keep your brain active.
Using Your Talents: Volunteering allows students to demonstrate their talents in a way they might not get to do academically. If you’re talented with social media, you can volunteer with an organisation’s social media channels, or if you have a talent for music, you can volunteer as a performer in care homes or local churches – it’s an incredible creative outlet!
Building Your Network
Community Engagement: As well as meeting new people who work in charitable teams, volunteering also allows you to engage with the wider community. Between assisting vulnerable people and encouraging the public to support a charitable cause, you’re constantly connecting with others.
Making Contacts: Networking doesn’t always have to happen in a professional capacity; any widening of your community is a form of networking! Volunteering teams are incredibly diverse and you’ll likely meet people with years of industry and life experience, and people who are just starting out. The advice and stories you’ll hear from other volunteers is truly invaluable. Volunteering can also act as a “foot-in” to a certain industry, and sometimes leads to a job offer.
Contributing to Society
Helping Others: As well as helping you develop new skills and prepare for the world of work, volunteering, by definition, is acting in service to others. You can make an impact on your local community and on the world, and support causes that are important to you.
Giving Back: Volunteering is a brilliant way to give back to a community or organisation that has supported you.
Practicing Empathy: Volunteering allows people to step out of their lives and see what other people are experiencing, allowing volunteers to further develop empathy and compassion towards others.
Overall, volunteering is an amazing way to prepare yourself for post-graduation life, step out of the university bubble and widen your community whilst also helping your local environment at the same time. You can work in person, online, independently when flyering or in teams when planning and executing events whilst demonstrating your talents, learning new skills and having fun with your new community, leading to a more fulfilling university experience!