As a student, there will be a lot of activities that you can choose to participate in during university. More often than not, the multitude of options can make it extra confusing to choose. Despite all these choices, I recommend you get involved with a volunteering program since it will teach you lessons that you could never get from your classes.
Volunteering, such as being a youth program organizer or an activist at your University student union, brings you so many soft skills that can be useful for your entire life. So, here are 5 reasons that prove you need to be a volunteer at least once in your lifetime:
1. It improves your management and interpersonal skills.
The conflicts that you’ll confront while you’re volunteering will help you develop your problem solving and critical thinking skills. You’ll meet so many diverse people, manage teams, and it will make you understand how to interact with different personalities. Some volunteer projects will also improve your time management skills, as you divide your time between your academic and volunteer assignments.
2. It broadens your network.
Volunteering activities will require you to meet so many people from different backgrounds and occupations, and that is a golden opportunity for you to broaden your network. Get to know many people and be kind to everyone you meet. This is also a platform where you can improve your empathy towards other people. The more you get to know people, the more you invest yourself in them; maybe they are the people who can help you to achieve your goals in the future.
3. It tests your resilience.
Volunteering activities can be stressful sometimes with assignments, extreme work conditions, or many ‘hard’ people to deal with. You will learn to control your emotions and develop your own coping strategies for overcoming stress. This can be a perfect way for you to practice your resilience towards stressful events in your life. Once you can manage your stress while you’re volunteering, you will be able to overcome the problems that await you in the future. Moreover, those stressful events will also make you more ready to compete with other millennials when you’re applying for an internship or a job.
4. It can be the source of happiness.
Volunteering means you’re helping people without getting any monetary compensation. Altruistic activities can lead you to feel happier, as you acknowledge that you dedicate your presence to helping people in need. You will feel happy and worthy after you know that what you’re doing helps others. Volunteering will help you to maintain your state of well-being since it gives you positive vibes within yourself.
5. It helps you to understand the meaning of life.
There will be so many lessons to learn from volunteering, as so many events change your understanding of life and the world. The extreme conditions you see and the people who you’ll interact with will make you understand what truly matters in life. Volunteering will give you so many lessons that can’t be learned in class; you won’t see life the same again and you will find your own purpose in your life.
Although volunteering will bring you many benefits, you have to understand that volunteering is all about helping other people. You can use the reasons above as your motivation at the beginning, but when you’re doing the volunteering, please make sure that you are doing it make society better. Let’s make our youth count and be remembered as people who made a difference. Always know that at the end of the day, we won’t be remembered by how rich or popular we are, but for what we did in our lives.
Featured image via Anna Shvets on Pexels
