Reasons To Volunteer

Reasons

Gain Valuable Life Experiences and Skills

Whether you build houses for the homeless or mail flyers for a local politician, you’ll experience the real world through hands-on work. You can use this experience to explore your major or career interests.

Meet Interesting People

Volunteering brings together a variety of people. Both the recipients of your volunteer efforts and your co-workers can be rich sources of insight. For example, maybe you’ll learn about the legal profession from a former lawyer you visit at a convalescent center.

Get Academic Credit

Some schools offer academic credit for volunteer work through “service-learning.” This is a teaching method that integrates hands-on learning (through service to the community) into the school curriculum. It’s available in high schools and colleges, as well as in earlier grades. To find out if your school offers service-learning, visit the Learn and Serve website.

Send a Signal to Colleges

Colleges pay attention to your life inside and outside the classroom. Your extracurricular activities reveal a great deal about you, such as what your interests are, whether you can manage your priorities and maintain a long-term commitment, what diversity you’d bring to the student body, and how you’ve made a meaningful contribution to something. Keep in mind, colleges are not interested in seeing you do it all. It’s more meaningful to colleges to see your dedication to one or two causes or activities than to see that you’ve spread yourself thin.

Travel to Far Off Places

In many instances you may be asked to travel to distant lands, places far away from home. Many times we need people that can travel to areas that need our assistance, such as: disasters, poverty stricken countries, areas isolated from the rest of the world. Some travel will be for diplomatic reasons, or to assist in opening branch offices.