Volunteering is known to have several benefits not only for the beneficiaries of the cause like disadvantaged people, animals, or the environment but also for volunteers themselves. Volunteering impacts the physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being of volunteers. The benefits of volunteering are tried and tested by several researchers and felt by countless volunteers.
Benefits of Volunteering
- Get a closer look at the world's problems
- Be a Changemaker
- Higher self-esteem and better well-being
- Live Longer and Happier!
- Travel and meet new people
- Learn new skills, customs, and even languages
- Be on a pathway to becoming a social entrepreneur
- Career Advancement
1. Get a Closer look at the World's Problems
It doesn’t matter if you travel to a remote village or a war zone to volunteer or if you volunteer for 2 hours a week nearby in your city or colony, volunteering will give you a closer look at the world’s problems.
There are so many people who are suffering physically, mentally, socially, judicially especially financially and volunteering will show you the reality without any filters. It will humble you down, remind you of your privilege and then give you an opportunity to bring change, make life easier for somebody who is under-advantaged or under-served in our society.
You will realize that there is literally so much you can do to help all while having the best time of your life.
2. Be a Changemaker
The biggest factor of volunteering is problem-solving. Volunteering puts you in a place where you are bound to bring some change, make an impact, and do something good. This is one of the most underrated benefits of volunteering.
Even if you have no clue about changing the world, you would be doing that in your own little way. Each day you spend in the community at the grassroots level, you see their problems and then work with a team to solve it.
The education we get and the privilege of knowledge from the internet already prepares us to be a changemaker.
No matter how long you volunteer or how big or small of a change you bring and the problem you solve, you would be a changemaker at the core.
3. Higher Self-esteem and Better Well-being
If you struggle with self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief, this might blow your mind.
Don’t take our word for it. This amazing research shows that people who volunteer have higher self-esteem, self-efficacy(self-belief) and social connectedness. They tend to believe in themselves and their abilities more than people who don’t volunteer. It also increases your confidence and ability to take action.
A direct correlation between volunteering and well-being was found and that’s not just research. Our volunteers have felt this every day while they are working quietly and selflessly in the field, something inside them changes that leaves them more confident and more in love and in alignment with themselves
4. Live Longer and Happier!
Would you believe us if we say that volunteers lived longer and happier than people who don’t volunteer? It’s true. This research called the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing found that the probability of death is lesser in volunteers as compared to non-volunteers and therefore they tend to live longer. Again, a research-backed point.
Lower depression among Volunteers
Apart from other mental-health benefits, Volunteers show a lower level of depression than non-volunteers (Read whole research here). Plus, helping people bring happiness, spreading smiles, and making somebody’s lives a little better than it was before kindles joy.
5. Travel and Meet New People
Volunteering is a great way to travel to a new place and do some good. Instead of making plans to just travel, one can always incorporate volunteering in their itinerary.
Not only will it make your travel more meaningful but it will also show you the completely new side of the place you are travelling to.
Whenever you have a couple of months or weeks to spare, its always a good idea to go to a new place, live with the community there, work with a local NGO and help as much as you can.
One another benefit of volunteering is that it will also help cover your travel and stay expenses if you stay there long enough and make an impact.
Read the experience of WeProffer’s first volunteer and Founder and how it changed her life.
6. Learn new skills, customs, and even languages
When you volunteer you open your body to all-around development. You meet new people every day and learn new things. If you spend long enough time with a new community, you would start to understand their language too and if you wish, they would be so happy to teach you not just their language but their customers, traditions and costumes too.
Now, if you are an introvert and this phrase “meet new people every day scares you”, don’t let it. When you volunteer, you have already done the hard bit. You are already out of your shell.
The pressure to be social and make friends would be almost non-existent because you are doing good work and nobody expects you to be bubbly and happy. You just need to solve the problem.
The more problems you solve and more value you bring, people in the community will love you and shower you with gratitude. The benefits of volunteering include improving your social skills, helps you make more friends, and be more socially active. Volunteering will in fact help you become more social so the right thing is to let it.
Read Volunteering for introverts. Can introverts be good volunteers?
7. Be on a pathway to becoming a social entrepreneur
A social entrepreneur is somebody who solves the world’s problems using a social venture or enterprise.
Volunteer work is the foundation of social entrepreneurship. It helps you build a network, identify problems that matter to you, and help solve them.
You can meet like-minded people who would help you build a venture out of your idea as a team, you will also have your early adopters (people who use your service/solution for the first time) ready and mentors in place.
Volunteering makes it easy to be a social entrepreneur as it also helps you connect with the community and care deeply about things and this we consider to be one of the biggest benefits of Volunteering.
8. Career Advancement
Volunteer work is regarded highly in your career. It not only does it present you as an emphatic person but also a problem solver, team player, and deeply passionate person which are all the most important traits employers look for in a candidate. It will also give you a lot of chances to tell your stories, convey how you can be a good leader/manager.
Volunteering makes for the best response at “Can you tell me an experience where you showed leadership or problem solving or where you took charge’. Such questions are frequent in an interview and answering them as a fresher is not easy but if you have volunteering experience, we are pretty sure you will have great experiences to share.
Does voluntary work count as work experience?
Absolutely. Volunteer work counts as work experience and is regarded very highly in most sectors and academic settings. You can count the number of hours you volunteered per week and then find the total time of your volunteer work.
Volunteers are the unseen glue to hold the social structure of our society. Countless hours donated to causes that matter is one of the reasons why our society is a better place to live in than it was 50 years ago but we are still far from the world of our dreams.
Therefore, volunteering needs to continue and with a bigger force.
Volunteering not only brings a huge impact on the world but in the volunteer’s lives too. The benefits of volunteering extent to longer life expectancy, higher-self-esteem, more confidence, increased self-belief and better well-being.