Reasons to Volunteer in Your Community
Volunteers are special people that like to give their free time to help others and their community. Have you ever wondered why these people like to give up their time for good causes?
Perhaps you are somebody that likes to help and are thinking about getting into volunteering? Well, there are many reasons people volunteer for their community and it is not just to help others.
While volunteering is generally done for free, if you wanted something in return, you could opt to volunteer through your local time bank. You will be able to trade your time for credits. You can call these time credits in when you need something done.
For each hour worked, you will earn an hour in credits. Need some work done at home? In need of a babysitter? Anything you need, you may find a fellow time bank member that can help you out in return for your time credits. Find out more about time banking from the Nomos blog.
Okay, so back to the reasons to volunteer in your community. We have listed several of them and while you will know some of them already, there are some you may not have thought of before.
Volunteering for Your Community Benefits You
Before we take a look at the benefits volunteering brings others, we thought we would take a closer look at the benefits you yourself will get when volunteering your time. While it is obviously great to help others, it will surprise you at the benefits that you can gain yourself. You get to meet new people, get work experience, and improve your health amongst others.
Benefits Your Health
Apart from the obvious health benefits gained by being active, volunteering will also benefit your mental health. Studies have shown that thinking about others and not yourself all the time helps to reduce stress. Furthermore, volunteering is a great way to boost your self-esteem and confidence.
Gives You Professional Experience
Volunteering is a great way to boost your career prospects too. Not only will you learn valuable working experience, having volunteering on your resume will make you extremely presentable to would-be employers. Studies have shown that recruiters value volunteering a lot when they are looking for new employees. It shows that you are passionate, have a positive attitude and not solely motivated by money.
You Learn A Lot
Another great reason to volunteer for your community is that you will learn new skills and potentially find that you have some hidden talents. An example may be if you are helping to cook food to hand out to the homeless, you may find that you are quite the natural in the kitchen.
Your volunteering may also lead to travelling abroad to help communities in need. You will learn about new cultures, taste new foods, and get worldly experience. If you stay long enough, you may even learn new languages!
You Will Make Many New Connections
Volunteering is a great way to meet new people with the best part being that these people will be similar-minded to you. They too want to help the community in the same way that you do. You will create many great bonds with new people daily! If you are travelling to other countries to volunteer for a good cause, you will meet locals and volunteers from other cultures.
Volunteering For Your Community Benefits Others
Although there are some great personal benefits gained from volunteering, most people do it to help others. This is why we love volunteers because they are great people who are selfless and want to help others. Whether they are volunteering through a time bank to help with issues like increasing recycling in the community, or directly for a charity to help the homeless, find homes for orphans, or raise money for causes, volunteers are doing a fantastic thing.
So how does volunteering for your community help others specifically? Below are just some reasons.
You Make an Impact
No matter how much time you are contributing, you are making an impact. Never undersell yourself if you cannot spare as much time as others, you are doing your bit and contributing big to your community. You are a small part of a large group of people around the world that is doing all they can for their local, national, and international communities.
You Can Contribute to a Cause You Believe In
Love animals or children? Lost a loved one to cancer of some other health issue? If there is a particular cause that you want to help, you will be able to find a charity to contribute to it. You will also learn about new causes that may become one you strongly believe in.
You Will Save Your Community Money
Depending on where you are, you will save on average, around $26 per hour that you volunteer. By volunteering your time to your community for free, you are saving it the money it would need to pay for somebody else to do what you are doing.
There have been over 60 million volunteers working annually in the US the past few years. Each year they are contributing a combined 60+ million hours and saving the country close to $200 billion.
Summing Up
As you can see, whether directly or through your time bank, there are many significant reasons to volunteer for your community. Most people only look at the benefits you are providing for others but there are tons of great benefits that you yourself can reap by giving your time for a noble cause.
If volunteering is something that interests you, why not look around for some local charities? You could even download our Nomos app, which will help you find a time bank in your community that actively volunteers for significant causes. That same app can help you create your own time bank if there are none near you.
Create your own Community using The Time Banking App
The Nomos app is a free timebanking application that helps you connect with other time bank communities. Via its excellent and easy to use software interface you can create or join communities and start to swap hours and bank hours as a currency. You can hire people’s services and advertise your own while always keeping track of hours received and hours given.
You can also ask people to help or volunteer for community activities
Connect with new people in your community who share the same interests
Help to save your community money by creating innovative solutions
All this can be achieved via the time banking app which you can download from the Nomos.net homepage.
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