The Benefits of Volunteering

With busy lives, it can be hard to find time to volunteer. However, the benefits of volunteering are enormous to you, your family, and your community. The right match can help you find friends, reach out to the community, learn new skills, and even advance your career. Research has also shown that  volunteering can help protect your mental and physical health.

One of the better-known benefits of volunteering is the impact on the community. Unpaid volunteers are often the glue that holds a community together. Volunteering allows you to connect to your community and make it a better place. However, volunteering is a two-way street, and it can benefit you and your family as much as the cause you choose to help.

Volunteering provides many benefits to both mental and physical health.

• Volunteering increases self-confidence. Volunteering can provide a healthy boost to your self-confidence, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. You are doing good for others and the community, which provides a natural sense of accomplishment. Your role as a volunteer can also give you a sense of pride and identity. And the better you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to have a positive view of your life and future goals.
• Volunteering combats depression. Reducing the risk of depression is another important benefit of volunteering. A key risk factor for depression is social isolation. Volunteering keeps you in regular contact with others and helps you develop a solid support system, which in turn protects you against stress and depression when you’re going through challenging times.
• Volunteering helps you stay physically healthy. Volunteering is good for your health at any age, but it’s especially beneficial in older adults. Studies have found that those who volunteer have a lower mortality rate than those who do not, even when considering factors like the health of the participants. 

As a mature age student, volunteering  is an opportunity to acquire job related skills and improve job opportunities. It is also a great way to network in the industry and make the right connections - after all, sometimes it is not What you know but Who you know.

For many of us, we compete with a diverse range of people for employment, and every little extra information on our resumes is imperative. People often mistake volunteering as being unimportant and not relevant to skill-sets, but it is the reverse that is true. Everything you do adds to your skill-set and industry knowledge, and the very act of volunteering is seen as a positive element for your resume.

You will notice that we will now have some volunteer agencies on our web page that will give you direct links to their web pages. So, if you are thinking of participating, go and check them out.

Cheers