Jen Hill
Hi I'm Jen and I'm here today to talk to you about volunteering. Now I'm sure that you guys are sitting there thinking that this is going to suck. And three years ago if I had to listen to someone talk about volunteering I would have thought it sucked. But that's because three years ago the only volunteer jobs I knew about were ones I thought were boring like calling people's houses to try to get donations for charity or being a candystriper. Volunteering just seemed like something that someone's mom would do. I couldn't imagine myself doing it.
There's a lot more to volunteer jobs than what people think. You can find a job doing just about anything. I did maintenance on tall sailing ships, the old-fashioned ones with square sails. I do layout for a youth center's newspaper. I'm also vice-president of their youth council that plans and runs different events like fashion shows, three-on-three basketball tournaments, pool and movie nights. Right now we're working on a huge fund-raising event at the Sega Playdium and starting to make a computer web site. I'm also a Scout leader and take kids on camping and hiking trips. My friends have coached gymnastics, groomed horses at a riding stable and participated in televised workshops on women's issues. They've also worked with behaviorally challenged kids and helped with political campaigns.
I'm sure a lot of you volunteer too, you just might not realize it. Managing or helping coach a school sports team is volunteering. So is working for the yearbook, writing for the newspaper or running any kind of club or activity. There are also plenty of ways for school clubs to do volunteer work related to their interests. My friend's environmental club cleaned up a creek bed one Saturday and my school's student council always does holiday food and clothing drives, offering a prize for the class that brings in the most stuff.
Being a co-op student and working for a semester is also volunteering. It's an especially valuable kind of volunteering because you see the business every day, on the good days and the days when everyone is busy and nothing's going right. You can really imagine yourself working in that field. You also build contacts and get valuable references.
A lot of people think that volunteers just do what they do to help other people. There's a lot more to volunteering than that. I have fun volunteering. I've found things I really like to do. It's the same for almost all volunteers. They really enjoy what they do. Aside from being fun, there's a lot of benefits to volunteering. My volunteer experience has helped me get jobs, become more confident and outgoing, learn what I want to do as a career, meet interesting people, travel and experience things I couldn't learn at school or at paying jobs. It's a part of my life that I'm really proud of.
A really obvious benefit to volunteering is that is that you get experience that can help you get a job. For example, my friend Erin and I lined up for 2 hours for the chance to be interviewed by a major department store. Even though I had more work experience, she got the interview because she was a volunteer at an art gallery gift shop and could use a cash register and credit card machine. I really thought that wasn't fair at the time. It doesn't take long to learn to use a cash register. But with so many people applying for jobs, businesses can demand experience for just about anything. You can't beat the system, so you have to make sure you get the experience you need and unless you luck into your first job, volunteering is the way to get that experience.
Other volunteer jobs that can give you direct job experience are volunteering at an office to learn business skills or as a kid's camp counselor or lesson instructor for things like dance, gymnastics, art and swimming. A lot of people who have these recreation type jobs have been a volunteer doing something similar before getting their paid job.
Even volunteer work that seems totally unrelated to paying jobs is very important. I've never had a volunteer job exactly like a paying job, but that doesn't mean my volunteer work doesn't help me. Things like being a leader with kids or working with others on a big project like a yearbook teach you skills like leadership, teamwork, communication and taking initiative. These are skills you can learn anywhere and use them in all different areas of your life. Employment counselors call them transferable skills or life skills.
Your volunteering experiences give you great things to talk about at job interviews. They can be more interesting and say more about you than your work experience because, especially when you're a student, everyone's work experience is very similar. I like to tell the story about how I learned to conquer my fear of heights by climbing the mast of a sailing ship with the rest of the ship's crew while we sailed into harbour with thousands of people cheering from the shore. It's a true story. We were sailing in a competition with boats from all over the world. Living with a lot of people when I was sailing and doing winter maintenance on the ships taught me so much about dealing with people, teamwork, leadership, responsibility and ultimately about myself. The inside of the ship, where 30 people slept, cooked, ate, etc., was smaller than a portable classroom. When you're sailing you have to be able to depend on everyone, or you literally won't get anywhere.
Volunteering gives you a chance to try many things, like sailing, that you wouldn't get to do in a paying job. Organizations will generally take you on with much less experience and spend more time training you in different skills. Because you're working on your time, you have more control over where you work and what you do. One of my current volunteer jobs is at a youth centre near where I live and in the 15 months I've volunteered with them I've got to see and understand all parts of what they do. I've worked on many different volunteer projects they've run, been a leader in some of them and worked with many different people. One of the most interesting parts about volunteering is that as one of the senior volunteers I get to sit on the board of directors that runs the centre. Other members of this board represent big businesses and agencies that fund the centre, like the United Way, the Red Cross, a major shopping mall, Boards of Education and more. They have really important and interesting paying jobs, but at the youth centre, the other students and I work as equals with them. We make really important decisions that affect the centre. I've learned a lot about how businesses and these agencies run and do business with each other. It's not something a lot of people get to see and personally I think it's really interesting.
My volunteer work at the youth centre has been an especially good experience for me, because in the last few months I've decided I want to be a social worker. I was never really sure what I wanted to do before, but as I looked at my work and volunteer experience, I realized that the one thing all the jobs had in common was that they all dealt with people. I like helping people and sort of figuring them out, like why certain people act the way they do. Through working at the youth centre I got to see the different jobs social workers can have. Whether you think you know what kind of job you want or you want to try out a few things you're interested in, I recommend volunteering as a way to do it. Co-op placements through school are an easy way to do this, but it's also quite possible to find your own volunteer job like I did. After all, if what you think is your dream career really isn't what you thought it was, it's better to find that out now. It's a lot less painful to change your mind now than when you're finished school. I've a friend who's going into Concurrent Education at university, with really no teaching experience. I wish her the best of luck; teaching is really hard and I wonder if she really knows what she's getting into.
Like I said before, I like to work with people and my favorite part of all the volunteer work I've done is meeting different people. Let's face it, in school the people you meet are mostly pretty much like you. You're the same age, you live near your school and maybe a lot of you grew up together. Volunteering is a great way to meet other people your age. Talking to people you don't know isn't easy for anyone, but having a volunteer job in common gives you a place to start. Volunteering also lets you meet people you wouldn't ordinarily get to. I've met a lot of adults through my volunteer work who were a really big influence on me. I'm a Scout leader now, and there are leaders who have been doing it for 30 years and still get down on the floor to play with the kids. There's leaders who are 70 years old and still going camping, in the middle of winter too. They give so much to the kids but they're so happy to do it. I think they're just incredible. The first time the other new leaders and I took the kids camping, my old leader came to bring us donuts. He said he was 'just driving around' - an hour from his house. We think he just felt like being there. I think it's a privilege to work with the people I've met and at the same time I'd like to be like them some day.
We have a lot of fun too. I really can't explain this, but I laugh the whole time I'm volunteering. I love the people I meet and the things I get to do. It's just that simple. I'm more outgoing and confident now, because of all the experience I've had dealing with different people and situations. I think volunteering can be a great experience for everyone. You just have to find something you're interested in and go into it with a good attitude. Think about trying it.
To learn more about what Jen thinks about volunteering,
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