COMMUNITY SERVICE

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT BENEFITS

As I’m sure you can imagine, there are a lot of benefits to doing volunteer work. They include School Benefits, Health Benefits, Community Benefits, College Benefits, Professional Benefits but today I would like to mention to Personal Development Benefits

One of the big ways that students will benefit from volunteer work is through personal development. This happens in a number of ways.

First of all, many students learn about their personal strengths and weaknesses. When you're working on campaigns and projects and getting to see real-life results, you'll get to know how your personal attributes and actions can make a difference. Many of these qualities are things that students can’t get good feedback on in the classroom. For example, students may learn that they have excellent skills in coping with a crisis or other stressful situations, or may learn that they find taking charge of a team to be a struggle. This kind of exposure to different situations can then teach students how to further develop skills that they have, and how to work on areas they struggle in.

In particular, students find that they are able to develop skills in leadership, communication, working well with a team, and finding solutions for problems.

Many students also find that community service makes them more aware of and interested in issues of social justice.

For example, if you spend your days going to school, playing sports, and doing homework, you will likely not spend a lot of time thinking about the problems that homeless people encounter.

On the other hand, if you're working every day at a homeless shelter, you'll have a chance to dispel stereotypes about why people become homeless while also learning about the unique challenges that homeless people face in getting off the streets. Many homeless people face prejudice that makes returning to work and earning a self-supporting living more difficult than it is for non-homeless people.

Once people learn more about struggles and injustices that other groups of people face, they are statistically more likely to want to actively take part in making a change in the policies and social structures that keep certain groups from succeeding. This change can take many forms, such as active campaigning, voting in elections, and continuing to volunteer time to important causes.

Volunteering has also been shown to have one other, more tangible major personal benefit.